Writings

Am I dreaming?

2025 Q1 Newsletter

I hold a small skull — flat, almost as if it had been pressed — in my hands, covered in dirt and lichen. Tasked with cleaning and filling it with new dirt, I pull out little sticks from its eye sockets and start compacting damp soil into its crevices. Once filled, it turns into a portal that transports me into another world and time. I’m wandering through a mansion — one room has huge ceilings with pink walls and white trim, another has turqoise paint and shimmering chandeliers. As I walk, I sense it’s the home of the person whose skull I hold.

So, I’ve been a little obsessed with dreams lately. In my notes app, I’ve recorded 88 days so far, totaling roughly 160 distinct dreams (since some nights I can remember multiple). What am I doing with all this information [nonsense]? Well, courtesy of the Internet and some research-minded friends, I’ve been going down a rabbit hole.

If you type ‘dreams’ into Google Scholar, the first paper that comes up is by a man named Frederik Van Eeden, who wrote “A study of dreams” in 1913 and coined the term lucid dreaming.¹ At the time of publication, he had recorded around 500 of his dreams over the course of 16 years in an attempt to study them. Proposing a classification system, Van Eeden defines seven types of dreams ranging from ordinary to pathological to lucid. To me, it’s all a bit speculative but

The science of dreams

Dream types

Why dreams?

Activities

Media consumed

REFERENCES

Van Eeden, F. (1913, July). A study of dreams. In Proceedings of the society for psychical research (Vol. 26, No. 47, pp. 431-461).

Creating a little space for musings.

Am I dreaming?