Last night, I crawled into bed at exactly midnight. I tried staying up late but I was so tired that I gave up and caved in at 11:56. I put in a good effort. But sometimes my sinus issues makes me more tired than I actually am. Or this is life from now on. Who knows.

I woke up from a stress dream that left me a bit perplexed. I’ve had a lot of those lately. Random dreams about random stresses in my life.

Most of you who read my blog know that I play the organ for a small church in town. This is something I’ve done for 15 years. And love it. But when stress creeps into my life, it usually manifests itself in all it’s ugly glory and appears as stress dreams. Or even more fun, night terrors And even better than that – sleep paralysis. I’ve had fully blown hallucinations from sleep paralysis. Not fun at all, I tell you.

Last night’s dream threw me off a bit. I was sitting in a pew in a crowded church. It looked very much like the Catholic church my mother used to drag us to every Sunday. That’s where I learn to read sheet music. I was bored to tears and would sing along to the hymns.

I was surrounded by strangers who were chanting and singing along to “Now we thank our god” when all of a sudden, I found myself sitting at the organ. I had already missed playing a verse because I couldn’t find the hymn in their hymnal book.

I panicked as the crowd started singing the second verse. No one seemed to notice that I wasn’t playing. I played the first chord. And started having flash backs to the first wedding I played the organ for. It was a scary experience.

Everything I played on the organ, came out wrong. Then they moved onto the next hymn and I was still trying to find the hymn – the number 345 appeared on the wooden board where they displayed hymn numbers. But that didn’t make sense. To me, number 345 was Morning Has Broken – a favorite of mine (and my mother’s).

Finally, the singing stopped and I found myself back in my seat. Next to me, sat friends from the church were I play the organ. I couldn’t figure out how I got there so fast. That’s how my dreams are. They seemingly flip from one scene to the next.

And then I moved to another dream. A handsome and dashing man from the crowd honed in on me to tell me how amazing my performance was (huh? what performance?) and asked if he could take me home. I said yes. And the dream turned into… um. Let’s just go with, something else.

All I know is I woke up from that dream and scratched my head. I have no idea what it means. But … is it a bad sign that I started off a new decade with a stress dream about doing something I’ve loved for fifteen years?

Ponder that scenario for a moment if you will.

I hopped out of bed at 8:15 am and by 9:00 am, I had cleaned up my kitchen and had coffee and breakfast ready. Plans for a semi-productive day are now on hold as I’m considering crawling back into bed. I don’t even know why I got up so early on new year’s day.

Eh, fuck it. I’m going back to bed. Maybe I can slip back into the dream and find out what it all really means.

How does stress manifest itself in your life?

Asking for a friend.

Happy new year!