Thursday morning was a difficult one. I was wrenched out of sleep much earlier than my body thought was right, catapulted into a high-stakes all-morning workshop and demonstration, and then kept in mental high-gear all afternoon until about 4:15 (at which point my day wasn’t done, but at least the heavy lifting was over). And through it all, I was haunted by a curious and vivid déjà vu.

This wasn’t the good kind of déjà vu. It didn’t include any sense that the situation was about to become more beautiful, or more joyful, or more serene. No, this déjà vu was particularly troublesome because it stemmed from a dream I was having when I was wrenched out of sleep that morning, and what made it worse is that I couldn’t remember the dream at all. All I knew was that it had to do with me being in peril and possibly losing consciousness. Periodically throughout that day and most of the next, I’d suddenly have the strong sense that this is what was happening just as I was about to lose consciousness, and I’d have the urgent wish to escape whatever it was that was about to happen. The trouble was, I didn’t know what was about to happen, which made me even more anxious.

Meanwhile, the rational side of my brain knew that everything was related back to that unremembered dream, that I was not soon to be in peril, and that I was not, in fact, in danger of losing consciousness. This rational piece of brain poked fun at the cowering, phantom-haunted side of brain:

“Isn’t it funny that fainting is such a dramatic and romantic act in those Victorian novels you grew up reading, and yet when it comes right down to it, you’re this scared of drawing that kind of attention to yourself…

“Don’t know know you’re getting all worked up over a dream? You’re not even dizzy! Dizziness comes before fainting, you ninny.

“I know you don’t remember the dream, but you do know that it had nothing to do with being in a workshop. So why do you think this is related?”

And so the day went on, and I brainstormed solutions to problems, trained people on technology they’d never used, encouraged the nervous, laughed with the confident, and generally carried on with my day. But all the while, this crazy duel raged in my head with one side pleading with me to just go home and curl up under the covers where it’s safe, and the other side of me pointing and laughing at the frightened side.

I’m glad a little more sleep and a little less intensity at work seems to have helped those two sides settle down amicably and get on with the business of ordering my thoughts.