Michelle Taylor

I had a strange dream -- an older man I knew I'd been close to and was saying goodbye to knowing I'd never see him again -- that didn't literally include a loved one dying but once I woke up I was convinced that was what the dream was trying to tell me, about a specific person.

I don't think it's a premonition or anything, but it still felt unsettling in the early hours.

Not least because in waking up from it I managed to thrash around and knock over my alarm clock and water bottle next to my side of the bed and, in the process of picking them up again, kicked poor D in the shin as he lay newly-awake and startled in bed next to me.

I don't think I've ever had a premonition really, but I find such things so interesting.

I remember once when I was in high school my mom told us one morning she was convinced she'd heard a voice saying "Get ready" but she couldn't think of anything it would've been telling her to get ready for. She seemed a little taken aback as she was telling us this. And I don't remember anything happening soon after that would have explained it; we didn't find anything special that we needed to "get ready" for. These things probably happen so much more often than the few that do "line up" for some narrative. But we are pan narrans: we remember what makes a good story and what doesn't ends up as just static in the background.

Our pattern-matching brains find meaning where there isn't necessarily any, and pareidolia can be aural as well as visual. Our dreams are partly about filing away the information we have acquired and it isn't at all surprising for mine to highlight that a very old man who's been very ill for a long time might die. Dreams are still so little-understood, and sleep in general. More things than are dreamt of (so to speak): sleep paralysis and "exploding head syndrome" (which is the best explanation I've found for something that happened to me regularly as a kid; I used feel like I was waking up to the sound of a racecar zooming by).

Last year I read a book about the British premonition bureau and really enjoyed it.

But I really wouldn't have been surprised if I'd gotten an e-mail from my mom today telling me that Les had died. The feeling can be so strong, and feel so otherwise-inexplicable, that we think it must have been driven by some real event out there in the world. I think especially in times like this when we dream about someone dying we want to think that it's not just our brains conjuring up something awful, as if we've made it more likely by imagining such a terrible thing. As if we're bringing it into the realm of the possible. But I don't think any of that.

I do think it's a sign of how stressed and miserable I've been feeling for the last week, ten days. My mood just crashed hard near the end of last week for some reason.

I slept very well during the heatwave that I know disrupted a lot of people's sleep, but now that it's cooled down I'm the one taking up the burden of restless and wakeful nights. And shit like bad dreams -- especially ones that make themselves known in the waking world, even if it is having to make sure my alarm clock's okay and my boyfriend's shin isn't badly affected by me thwacking it -- just feels bad! It set me up for a bad morning: I had an argument with a security guard making it harder for me to get to transgym, I got disoriented on the way back because I had to exit a different way, during my post-gym shower I got shampoo in my eye (the "good" eye of course) and it hurt all day, I was sure I'd lost my bluetooth headphones... (luckily they did turn up later, but sheesh).

It feels like a lot of change is in the works for both me and my household, from our bodies to the literal structure around us, like solar panels and doors, and I think I've found that (understandably but very annoyingly) overwhelming.

Some of the chanfe has meant medically-necessary dietary changes which are not for me but are having an impact on me by making it even more stressful to plan/make dinner on work days (much less eat it).

Change is coming at work too: either I'll be a manager or I'll have a new manager (probably). Luckily the deadline for that has been extended from tomorrow to about a fortnight, so my indecisiveness and/or lack of executive function to pursue applying for it doesn't necessarily rule me out like I was beginning to worry it might.

V has the conviction that chronic illness should prevent prevent you from ordinary illnesses -- allergies or colds or whatever -- I would like to offer my own observation:

I have somehow acquired a blister on my foot at rhe same time as my eczema, which is also on my feet, is flaring.

This feels excessively unfair. (Especially because the blister is in a spot on my heel that there's no point putting a bandaid on because it'll immediately fall off due to how skin moves.)

My big achievement of today was fixing a problem I found out about yesterday: a meeting I was very excited to get invited to next Tuesday turned out to be an in-person thing in London.

Which wouldn't be a big deal except I already have to be in London on Thursday.

Tuesday is the most inconvenient day to add to this! I've done two and even three days of London events in a row, but I didn't want to have to impose on a friend to stay with for that long or stay in a budget hotel on my own for that long or make day trips to and from London on two out of three days.

I cannot move or get out of Thursday (it's going to be an absolutely ghastly event; I'm on a panel), and Tuesday is a big win to get involved with an organization we haven't before and that it'd be really useful to be involved with, and again it has to be me.

But since it's some new people, they had offered to have a chat with me to talk about how they could ensure the meeting will be accessible to me. And that meeting happened to be arranged for this afternoon. My only idea was to ask them if I could join on Teams.

So when it came around, I mentioned this, and these two nice guys said "Well it's funny you mention that actually because there's going to be tube strikes which will make it difficult for a lot of people to get to our office. So we might move it anyway, but yeah if we don't we have the AV stuff in the office for the meeting to be hybrid."

I was so relieved! It was difficult not to let it show too obviously on my face.

So yeah, now I don't even know if this meeting I care about will happen next week, but either way I can do it on Teams instead of going to London!

It's nice when things work out in my favor.