#oneaday Day 5: Trapped Inside

Do you ever feel trapped inside your own head? I mean obviously we’re all trapped inside our own heads, our eyes our only windows out of our self-imposed prisons, but what I mean is, do you ever find yourself finding it, say, difficult to wake up because of what your imagination is conjuring up?

I’ve been feeling this for a while. I’m not entirely sure what causes it, whether it’s a side-effect of the medication I’m taking, whether it’s a symptom of my mental health conditions or if I’m just naturally predisposed towards this sort of thing. Regardless of the cause, though, there are mornings where I genuinely do feel absolutely “trapped” inside the scenarios my imagination has conjured up for me; part of my consciousness is saying “wake up, get up, you need to go to work”, but my brain is saying “no, you need to stay here and resolve this completely fictional, made-up scenario before you do anything else”.

Another way of putting it might be that I feel sort of “addicted” to dreaming. I have quite vivid dreams — always have done — and those dreams tend to be at their most vivid in the morning, particularly if I’ve already woken up once and fallen asleep again. In those circumstances, I suspect they’re probably an interpretation of my brain being aware that I need to get up soon, if not now, and expressing that source of anxiety through somewhat surreal means. But it ends up being counterproductive, because I inevitably find the dreams so interesting that I don’t want to leave them behind and wake up.

I’ve genuinely had mornings where I’ve felt like I didn’t want to get up because I thought I needed to “finish” whatever was going on in the dream first. Except because the dreams themselves were so abstract, there was no real “win state”, for want of a better word; no means of “completing” or “resolving” them. And so I just end up being drawn back in, often repeating the same situation over and over again rather than making any real “progress”.

The human mind is fascinating. I wonder if one day we will be able to better understand and explore the things that go on in there. I’d certainly be fascinated to explore the worlds within in a more “lucid” manner. But for now, I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with sleeping in slightly longer than I should in the morning, in the vain hope that I might actually “finish” a dream.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

1723: Sword of the Mind

I’m really not looking forward to the day that my imagination doesn’t work any more — if indeed such a day will ever come.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer carry an umbrella and imagine it’s the legendary sword Curtana, hacking and slashing my way through hordes of enemies (or, indeed, zombified shoppers who just want to get out of the rain but who are too cold and wet to actually exert themselves).

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer get on a piece of gym equipment accompanied by the Shadow of the Colossus music and imagine that, rather than simply engaging in the eminently pointless waste of time that is lifting a heavy thing then putting it down again lots of times, I am actually battling some monstrous foe that can only be defeated by lifting bits of it up, then putting them carefully down again.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer imagine what it would be like if my car could actually take off and fly, rising high above the surprised, bewildered and frightened heads of the other occupants of the traffic jam I’m in before shooting off into the distance via a far more direct route than any road ever offered.

I do wonder to myself whether or not my imagination will ever stop working. I doubt it will; after all, many creative types continue being creative well into the twilight of their life, though the exact form of what the imagination conjures up doubtless varies and changes as the years pass by.

I’m conscious of the changes to my own imagination, though in some cases these are due in part to other mental changes rather than the imagination itself. Take that period between going to bed and going to sleep, for example; when I was young, I could happily conjure whole worlds up for myself, exploring them and having all sorts of strange and wonderful adventures, blurring the lines between conscious thought and dreaming until eventually I’d awaken the next morning to the rather unwelcome sound of the alarm clock.

These days, however, I haven’t lost the ability to conjure up mental pictures, but the darkness that resides inside my head occasionally uses this time to show itself: instead of strange and fantastic worlds, my mind shows me far more mundane things, but often with the worst possible outcome; sometimes it’s nothing but words as I think about a conversation I’ve had — or need to have but am afraid to — while others it’s a mental picture I simply can’t look away from, no matter where I turn.

This isn’t a decline of the imagination at all, since my brain still conjures up very vivid pictures — and, I hasten to add, it’s not every night that I’m wracked with dark and terrible images that if not terrify me to my very core at least make me a bit anxious — but it is a change. I feel like I have less conscious control over my imagination: I can’t simply send myself to another world any more, at least not all the time; there are occasions where I have to let my mind take the lead and follow along after it. (I realise that makes no sense, but little to do with the strange inner workings of the human mind and consciousness does.)

There are other times when I can happily immerse myself in a world of my — or indeed someone else’s — creation, however. Reading a good book still makes glorious technicolour mental images appear before my mind’s eye. Writing something creative has an even more powerful impact on my imagination, stirring it into action. Closing my eyes and listening to pieces of music can either stir up imaginative scenes or conjure memories that I haven’t thought about for a long time.

The inside of my head isn’t perfect, and there is much about it I would probably change given the opportunity. But at the same time, it’s become a strangely comfortable place to be, dark corners and all; it’s a defining part of who I am, which is why I doubt that the door into that wonderful, terrifying place will ever truly be slammed shut.

#oneaday Day 788: From the Depths of the Subconscious

Analysing your dreams can probably tell you a lot about yourself. If that’s the case, though, I’m not sure I want to know what my most recent vivid imaginings say.

I dream best in the morning after I’ve woken up once. At least, those are the dreams I remember. If I wake up when Andie leaves for work and promptly fall back asleep again (which, to be perfectly honest, I usually do) then I’ll often have incredibly vivid dreams which, more to the point, I tend to remember pretty clearly. They’re certainly not conscious imaginings, because there’s no way I’d choose to think of a lot of the things that flit through my mind. Rather, it appears to be a completely automatic process, presumably based on anxieties or thoughts already stuck in my head.

This morning, these bizarre “snooze dreams” were — and I apologise for what I’m about to recount — rather lavatorial in nature. To begin with, I found myself sitting on a toilet in an upstairs hallway of a house. It wasn’t my real-life house, though I think it might have been my own house in the dream. Quite why there was a toilet in the upstairs hallway was anyone’s guess. And quite why I was sitting on it when the house was clearly playing host to a large party is an even bigger mystery.

Despite the fact I had clearly just had a dump in front of all the passing partygoers — most of whom seemed oblivious to my presence and activities — for some reason (and again, I apologise) I found myself unable to… uhh… “clean up”, as it were. I found myself panicking and wishing all these people weren’t in my house, screaming at them to get out of the way, but still no-one paid me any heed.

I ran downstairs and found myself in the house I lived in for my fourth year of university. I knew there was a nice, quiet toilet in the back where I could complete my business, so I opened the door. I found a toilet all right, but it wasn’t the one I was expecting. Rather, it was in a large, L-shaped room whose walls and floor were all made of ceramic tiles. There was no ceiling to the room, and outside I could see that we appeared to be floating in space. Worse, there was no bog roll here, either, only three circular red buttons next to the toilet.

I left, and the subsequent journey was a blur, but I ended up in what appeared to be an aeroplane bathroom, albeit one with a sloping roof that met the wall behind the toilet, and a large skylight in it. When standing in front of the toilet, I could look out through the skylight, and I saw that we were in some sort of rural area. Outside the skylight, men in peculiar costumes were being shepherded away by strange figures I can’t remember any details about. For some reason, I thought nothing of this strange and slightly sinister behaviour, because I had more pressing matters on my mind.

There was a toilet paper dispenser on the wall, so I pulled the handle to dispense some, but the string of sheets went down a small hole underneath the dispenser. When I retrieved the paper from the hole, it was completely covered in a weird black sludge which was then all over my hand. After going “urgh” for a little while, I simply washed it off, finally wiped my arse (noting with some surprise that my underpants had not been soiled despite all the running around) and then woke up slightly worried that I might have shat myself in my sleep. (I hadn’t.)

This particular incident follows a long stream of other bizarre “snooze dreams” I’ve had which include being unable to go through with a sexual encounter because I didn’t have the sheet music for it; starting to read the TV Tropes page for my own life and being literally unable to look away from it; and a particularly unpleasant one where I lived in a big house with all my friends and we all suddenly started hating each other for no apparent reason.

My subconscious is fucked, basically. Oh well, at least it keeps things interesting. And the fact I can remember all this nonsense gives me good fodder for when I actually do want to do something creative and imaginative… though I can’t see a novel about someone who might have shat himself catching on, really.

#oneaday Day 723: The Escapist

Escapism is cool, and an important and valid method of keeping yourself sane.

There are, of course, many means of escapism, and different ones are more or less effective for different people.

There’s the escapism of a child giving life to the inanimate lumps of plastic they own. Without a child, they’re just potential, models, things to be looked at, without life. Add a child (or, more specifically, someone still in possession of their childish imagination) and something magical happens — those objects come alive, engaging in battles to save the galaxy; heroic adventures; or even just a normal day in a normal street.

Then there’s the escapism of a good book. Good readers also have one of the most important qualities of a good creative writer: that active imagination again. But it’s partly also down to the writer to create a convincing world, compelling characters and a reason for the reader to commit part of their life to staring at tiny print on paper, e-ink or an LCD display. You know a writer’s done their job properly if you can hear the characters’ voices, see the places they’re in, picture the things they’re doing. And as a reader, your interpretation and mental imagery might not be the same as the writer (or indeed the person who designed the book’s cover) — but that doesn’t make it any less valid.

There’s the escapism of interactive entertainment. Instead of passively observing an unfolding story, you become a part of it. It doesn’t have to be an explicit narrative as such — a long game of Civilization tells a story just as much as a chapter of Heavy Rain. The meaning the player chooses to assign to the experience is what makes interactive entertainment special.

There’s the escapism of film. Increasingly designed as memorable spectacles these days, a good movie plunges its audience into darkness before casting them into a whole new world. It could be a world of giant robots; of CIA agents; of lads on a pulling holiday. For those couple of hours, though, the outside world ceases to matter.

There’s the escapism of a good TV show. When you find a show that resonates with you, you want to stick with those characters, to find out what makes them tick, what they want, what they find challenging. You cheer for their successes, feel bad when they encounter adversity. And given the amount of time you spend with the cast of a TV show over an average run of a moderately successful show these days, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the cast might feel like “friends” by the time you’re through.

And there’s the escapism of music. Music is a powerful imaginative stimulus, but again it means different things to different people. For one person it might stir up dormant memories. For another it might encourage them to close their eyes and picture themselves in a whole new situation. For yet another it might have an emotional impact that reflects the things that are weighing on their mind at that moment in time. And for others still it might inspire them to push forward, to do their best, to power on through and do that extra set at the gym, or put in that extra bit of effort at homework.

All this isn’t even getting into what it means to be a creator as opposed to a consumer of all the above media, either.

The fact is, the world can be, at times, a bit of a sucky place. Having something comforting to escape into, whatever form that escapism might take, is important. No-one likes to feel trapped, so even if it’s only for a short while, escape into something awesome and return to the real world refreshed, invigorated and ready to tackle any challenges it might want to throw at you.

And if you don’t have anything like that? Then you need to have more fun.

#oneaday Day 700: Imaginary Play

I often wonder, with all the video games and DVDs and Blu-Rays and smartphones and augmented reality and assorted other whatnots available today: how do kids cope with play that is purely imaginative?

I don’t have an answer to that question, but it occurs to me upon contemplating the impending festive season. Some of my most fondly-remembered toys were, I think, the ones which encouraged imaginative play. I mean, obviously the Super NES was frickin’ awesome, but besides that, I mean.

One of my favourites of all time was a line of toys called Manta Force. There were three sets: the titular Manta Force, who were made up of a huge mothership containing air, sea and land vehicles; their rivals Red Venom who had an equivalent, more angular, spiky mothership; and the Manta Force Battle Fortress, which was by far the best bit.

These toys didn’t come with anything battery-powered — no lights, no motors, no nothing. Any “life” they were to have had to be provided by you. Without you, they were just inanimate lumps of plastic. But add one or more humans with a good imagination and no sense of shame, and suddenly Manta and Venom’s conflict came to life.

The battle escalated with the addition of the Battle Fortress to the lineup, which was a large mountainside base with several landing pads for aerial vehicles, several working guns and, rather inconveniently, some targets painted on the front which, if hit with a plastic disc launched from the conveniently-provided plastic disc launcher, would cause the spring-loaded launch pads to catapult anything standing on them up into the air. I only remember playing with it a few times as it was meant to be — with a friend attacking, and you defending with the Fortress’ working guns, all of which fired plastic pellets of variable sizes. But I remember it being a lot of fun.

I’m sure kids still do have “imaginative play” toys these days. It’s something you kind of lose focus on as an adult, since you’re supposed to be concentrating on grown-up things like savings accounts, tax returns and grocery shopping. But I’m pretty sure that in most of us exists the potential to play with our imaginations — sometimes with a little help from something like Minecraft.

The imagination is indeed a great and powerful thing. Have you used yours lately?

#oneaday Day 94: Darkness Falls

It’s been quite some time since I blogged at this hour. Last year, it was a semi-regular occurrence, thanks either to my buggered-up body clock, failing to blog until the late evening (or in some cases, until after I’d gone out and come back again) but for the most part, this year the datestamps on my work have been for the correct day. Tonight I’ve been recording a podcast, though, and I didn’t think to write something earlier, largely ’cause I was working.

I like night-time. I’ve often thought that night-time is the period in which my brain works best. Well, I’m not sure about “best” because I doubt if I wanted to do anything which could be called “work” right now that I’d do it to the best of my ability, but my brain certainly is at its most creative.

This is both a blessing and a curse; it means that the imagination can run wild, allowing you to picture wild and fantastic scenes as you attempt to lull yourself to sleep, but it also means that you can worry about things like taxes, cancer and alien invasions. It’s strange that the time of day at which you should theoretically be most exhausted is actually the time at which your brain seems most keen to get up, jump around and keep tapping you on the shoulder.

Perhaps it’s the fact that there’s no other distractions. By the time it gets to this hour, hopefully you have no “commitments” to worry about, no work to do, nothing you absolutely must do right now. As such, your brain decides that it’s playtime and starts wandering around looking for things to do when in fact all your body wants to do is get to sleep.

Sitting in darkness with a total lack of distractions is a good time to get things sorted in your mind. Given that we live in a world where we are surrounded by devices, websites, pets, siblings, partners, family members and various other things which all demand our attention to varying degrees, the opportunity to sit in the darkness and be, for once, alone with your thoughts is something which should be welcomed and cherished. You don’t necessarily have to come to any conclusions or make any big decisions—but the simple act of taking a moment to listen to what your brain is telling you is often enough to make you feel better about something.

And remember, whatever your brain might be telling you at 2AM, the eventual outcome will never be as bad as you’re expecting. So in many senses, those anxieties that you might find yourself feeling at stupid o’ clock in the morning may, in fact, just be setting you up for a pleasant surprise a little way down the road.

Now I’m going to go to sleep before I babble on about any more crap.

#oneaday, Day 120: Education, Edducaytion, Eddyukayshun

Schools are “failing our children”. So say various government watchdogs, quangos, hypocrites, rhinoceroses and jabberwockies. But aforementioned bodies (some of which I may have made up a little bit) don’t take into account that it’s their fault in the first place that schools are “failing our children”. Not to mention the fact that there’s also a lot of blame to lay at the feet of both the parents and the kids themselves before you start pointing the Finger of Justice™ at the hard-working teachers and other school staff who are trying very much to make the best of a bad lot.

I quit being a full-time teacher. Twice, in fact. I’m not going to make that mistake a third time. Fool me once and all that. Currently, to pay the bills, I am enjoying the life of a supply teacher. This means that I can choose whether or not to sleep in every morning or maybe be woken at the crack of dawn by a phone call saying some festering scumhole school in the very armpit of Southampton is short of a teacher for today and could I possibly go along with a chair, a whip and a net and see if I can do anything with them? There are two very simple equations to bear in mind here.

1. sb = 0(£) + 100(j) where sb is “staying in bed”, £ is money and j is joy.

2. nsbapcdtvfssvas = muchos(£) – 5000(j) where nsbapcdtvfssvas is “not staying in bed, answering phone at crack of dawn, visiting festering scumhole school in very armpit of Southampton”, £ is money and j is joy.

So while equation 1 leads to a gain in joy, it does not lead to a gain in money. Indirectly, in fact, it tends to lead to a decrease in money, as staying at home often leads to wandering out in search of coffee. However, while equation 2 leads to an increase in money it leads to a substantial hit in the joy department. And no, that’s not a euphemism for your dangly parts.

But I digress in talk of made-up maths. I was about to tell you what is so very wrong with education. Particularly primary-level education, as that’s where I’ve been spending most of my time recently. So let’s do another list, shall we? Good. I know how you like lists, particularly if they’re illustrated.

1. Overcomplicating everything.

I remember when I was at primary school. A tick meant “correct” and a cross meant “wrong”. If you were lucky, you got a brief comment, like “Good.” or “Lazy work.” depending on whether you’d done good or lazy work.

In the school I was working in today, they had a “marking key” on the wall. A squiggly line meant “look at this”. A straight line with a “sp” meant “spelling mistake”. A circled letter meant “you should have used a capital letter”. A circled empty space meant “you have missed some punctuation”. A caret meant “you’ve missed a word out”. And then and only then did the key reveal that, yes, tick means “correct” and cross (or dot, now) means “wrong”.

Seriously? These are eight- and nine-year olds we’re dealing with here. Some of them can barely read, and you expect them to decipher that babble? Not only that, but then every book is expected to have a comment in there which, at the very least, says something inane like “Well done! You have shown me you are able to use connectives to join sentences together!” or “Congratulations! You successfully subtracted two things using the written method!” or “Super! You were able to recreate the entire Nutcracker Suite through the medium of rectal flatulence!”

Which brings us nicely on to…

2. Using unnecessarily high-level language.

Remember: eight- and nine-year olds. Do they really need to know terminology like “learning objective” and “success criteria”? I am yet to meet a child who actually knows why they write down the learning objective and success criteria other than “it’s the stuff we copy at the start of the work, innit”. The sole purpose for it is so when the inspectors come to play that the teachers can point proudly at the various learning objectives and say “Look! They’ve done this!”.

Bollocks.

3. Making unnecessary work.

Oh silly me. I made a mistake. The children shouldn’t be copying the learning objective and success criteria. The teacher should have prepared them all in advance, trimmed them to size and stuck them in the children’s books for them. Bear in mind at this point that a typical class has about 30 kids in it, each with at least five books (literacy, numeracy, “topic”, science, art) and each day typically has four or five different things going on throughout the course of it. So hey, with all that to plan, what’s a little extra cutting and sticking into ninety different books?

4. Dumb-ass theories that make no sense.

There are too many of these to count. Phonics is one. Anything involving behaviour management is another. Take a quick detour and go and watch this, including the stupid interactive part. The first shot of the class and the obnoxious children in it is the most accurate depiction of what it’s actually like to be in a classroom. However, the supposed “strategies” for dealing with the class are complete bollocks. Giving the teen who thinks talking about fucking his classmate’s mother a “positive note” if he sits down and gets on with his work? Don’t make me laugh.

5. Pressure, pressure, pressure!

I was talking to someone the other day – I think it may have been Rhiarti – and talking about how the imagination of young people is stifled these days. UPDATE: Yes, it was definitely Rhiarti, right here, in fact. So yes – the imagination of young people is stifled by the fact that they’re expected to learn all these million-and-one different techniques which there’s no way in hell are going to stay in their tiny heads. I remember “writing” at primary school being all about writing stories. Now, they’re expected to write Reports, Explanation Texts, Instruction Texts, Recounts, Narratives and all manner of other things (all inevitably capitalised, too) rather than, you know, just being able to sit down and write to express themselves. Even when they do get the rare opportunity to write a story, it’s inevitably got such a long list of completely arbitrary success criteria for them to fulfil that any semblance of creativity has been battered out of them by the end of their school career. Which is sad.

All this is the tip of the iceberg. Don’t even get me started on the “three stage lesson”, on “thinking skills”, “thinking hats”, Bloom’s Taxonomy, starters, plenaries and all manner of other shit.

So, in summary, a lot needs to change. But unfortunately, all of the things above, which are quite obviously and clearly dumb and stupid, are the sorts of things which men in suits with clipboards think “get results” and “show progress”. Well hooray for progress. Somehow we managed without it for a long time. Why can’t we go back to those days, for the kids’ sake and for the sake of the poor, anxious teachers constantly on the verge of nervous breakdowns?