History

    I hate history. How can we have a subject dedicated to what "actually" happened when nobody knows what's going on anymore? We haven't known what's real for almost a thousand years now, we don't even have reliable physics any more. Most people don't think we had reliable physics in the first place, we were just really good at convincing ourselves that we did. 

    I know everything that happened after about 2075 or so. I have to, it's part of my job. I know how, after our amazing failure at stopping global warming, we rebuilt everything by scratch, piece at a time. It was slow, messy, and took centuries, but we pulled it off. Because the human race is amazing and nothing can defeat us. Unfortunately, even before global warming destroyed everything people were beginning to notice that when you looked at things at a large enough scale, things didn’t add up. Even back in 2020 people were theorizing that there was no such thing as an objectively real world, it was all subjective in the eyes of its inhabitants. We found our first evidence of that in 2110, it was confirmed in 2403 and everything we've done since then has been to try and keep our world real while figuring out what laws magic runs by, if it even runs by laws. I suppose I should be grateful that we at least have actual scientist studying magic now, and the discipline isn't run by random people writing novels anymore. Though even back when it was the rules were oddly consistent. Given how people react when reality fails, I guess it isn't very surprising. 

   We have no way of knowing what, if anything, was going on before the 2000's. We have written records, but they aren't reliable enough for anyone to get any real data from. The problem is that the further back into the past you attempt to look, the messier it becomes. It turns out that little changes can lead to huge outcomes, but it also turns out that sometimes changing something seemingly massive can have little to no impact on history at all. Most of our records could be justified by any number of steps from a certain point, and we have no way of knowing what actually happened. 

    That doesn’t stop people from judging you if you don't "know" what happened in the 1800's or something. Like what people thought back then had any impact on today. Well, I guess the ancestors are the reason we're stuck with a dating system that doesn't make any sense. No one I know worships Christianity any more. A lot of people respect it, but most agree that by the twenty-first century it was showing its age, and by the twenty-second there were better, more consistent belief systems to use. Okay, I guess it's a stretch to call them "better", since there are still a lot of jerks who worship the Universe, just as they used to worship god. Also there's the fact that while we have a solution to the problem of evil, nobody knows how to deal with the problem of Utopia. I get that conflict can make a world stronger, but it can also tear a world apart, so why make it impossible for people to have a "perfect" world if that's what they want? 

    Rose doesn't know much about this. She's only about four, and the local schools aren't as good as the one I went to back in America. I haven't been to school in three years, but I study at home whenever I can. The people in charge would love for me to miss an obvious fact that everyone knows so they can justify killing me off and letting somebody else rule over earth, but I won't let that happen. I can't argue that they would probably do a better job, but I will argue that it's better for everyone not to have the jerks in charge of Earth's government have control of earth's ruler. None of them know how magic works, and none of them understand the danger it's putting us in. 

A Maladaptive Dreamer

    There's this thing called Maladaptive Daydreaming disorder. I strongly suspect that I have it. I've been seeing it mentioned more and more these days, and I've decided that I want to talk about my experiences as a woman whose favorite hobby is daydreaming. 

     I want to state up front that I'm not looking for sympathy. After all, I'm a writer and compulsive daydreaming is perfect if you want to write things. I'm just trying to reduce the stigma I and many other people feel when talking about their experiences. Also, I want daydreaming to be more accepted in our society in general. I don't think we should be daydreaming all day, or even devoting all of our free time to it, but I think it sucks that you're supposed to spend your childhood having wonderful imaginary adventures but once you reach about eight or nine, you're just supposed to let go of your imagination and focus on the real world. Yes, some of us are lucky to reconnect with our fantastical side in adulthood, but a lot of us aren't. 

    I'm not going to pretend that being a dreamer is all sunshine and rainbows. I am one of those people who prefers talking with my imaginary friends to talking to real people. After all, if anything goes wrong the off switch is right there. Then there's the problem of me being almost unable to focus on anything that doesn't involve daydreaming. My brain has constant access to an easy source of stimulation, so if I try to get it to do anything else it threatens to quit. 

    Maybe one of the benefits of growing up in the digital age is that everyone, to a degree, understands what it's like to compulsively daydream. Why do something boring like spend time with your family when your phone is right there after all? Maybe people like me, who don't have to worry about being bored, can help those who are trying to remember what it's like to let your brain become silent

The Laws of a Dreamworld

     Humans like to pretend that Dreamworlds, unlike Estellia, are lawless. This couldn't be further from the truth. Since a Dreamworld is only as strong as the belief of those who inhabit it, Laws are essential to keeping them together. Not just laws governing behavior, but laws governing the way things move. 

    What you need to remember when creating a dreamworld is that the physics, whatever they might be, need to make sense on an instinctive level. You can't just write them down on a piece of paper and expect everyone to follow them. If people don't follow you're physics without thinking, or worse, they can't, then your dreamworld won't feel real to them and will subsequently cease to exist. 

    It is also essential that your dreamworld be built to withstand conflict, even if you plan on building a dreamworld that functions without it. Conflict can add depth, but it can also tear a dreamworld apart if both sides don't feel that their viewpoints can be expressed. Always make sure your world feels meaningful to those who live in it, even if you disagree with their views. 

    Finally, make sure that your dreamworld is malleable. If it can't be changed, people aren't going to want to engage with it which means they aren't going to be able to believe in it as easily. So make sure that people can change it, even in small ways, to suit them and their needs. You don't need to create a utopia, you just need to create a world where people can be happy. 

   Above all else, make sure people believe in your dreamworld without being pressured to do so. If you've built your dreamworld well, belief should come so naturally that even criticism won't undermine people's perception of its reality. That is to say that even if people don't find it fun, they'll still feel that it has value. Believing in something and knowing that it's real are not the same thing, after all. 

     I hope that more people with disabilities start talking about their experiences. I think it needs to be a bigger part of public discourse then it currently is. The biggest problem we're facing is that society isn't built to meet the needs of those who live in it, the only way that will ever change is if people start being more vocal about their struggles.

Reality

 Oh, to have the luxury of sanity,
To have the promised extra of 
Knowing you live in reality.

How I wish I knew
That my world would stay real,
That the sun would rise once more. 

     We need to reclaim fun in our society. 

     Much as I love writing for this blog, I find doing weekend posts difficult. I do enjoy writing about my views on life, but I don't want this blog to be all heavy and dramatic. I didn't set out with any particular goal in mind. It's why it's called "Train of thought". I figured that I'd just write whatever was on my mind on any given day. Naturally, I wound up not writing anything at all. People made it seem like a much bigger deal then it needed to be. That's how things work, something that used to be fun and easy becomes high end and crazy because eventually people only care about the crazy things you can theoretically do, not the fun you can have. 

The Dream Tower

    At the center of Estellia, positioned to be at an equal distance from all of the five major cities, is the Dream Tower. It is said to be where every dream, wish, promise, everything that generates power, is gathered to be turned into a dreamworld. Aside from the high nightmares, nobody knows what goes on there. The only people allowed in the city that surrounds it are Nightmares and those who are close to joining them. 

The Meaning of Hope

   I've written about hope a fair amount on this blog. I wrote this post about the importance of not giving up when things looked like they were only going to get worse, and this poem about how hard it is to hold on when it seems like nobody will listen to you. In case you were wondering, I actually wrote that poem after I finished "A Glass House". Fortunately, I feel like the easy kind of hope is a little easier to come by then it was, at least if you hate Donald Trump as much as I and most of America do. 

    When I say, "The easy kind of hope," I'm talking about the kind of hope most Millennials and a lot of Gen Z had when they were kids. It's the kind of hope you have when things are pretty good, but you know they can be a lot better. It's when the economy is good and everyone who has a job wants one, but human rights aren't as far along as you want them to be. It's when you have a path that could lead to great fortune, but you want a path that will bring you personal happiness and you feel that you have a decent chance of success. Those are the kinds of situations where good things happen all the time, and even if you have a run of bad luck there's always something or someone to fall back on, so it's easy to believe that things will get better. 

    We don't live in those times anymore. Now we live in times where at least once a month something awful happens. The economy is doing okay, but everyone thinks a recession is on the horizon. We were making progress in the arena of human rights, but thanks to the Republican party much of our progress is being erased, and nobody decent is happy about that. Success, as we used to define it, is now a long shot, and even if you obtain it, you won't have as much as you might have had in better times. 

      Yet we're still going on. People are leaving jobs that don't bring them joy. People are fighting against the Supreme courts decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. People are fighting back against the companies who don't care that our planet is dying. They aren't doing this because they things will get better anytime soon, but because they don't want to give up on the future they want so badly. 

     That's because when the easy kind of hope starts to fail us, the hard kind of hope kicks in. This is the hope that comes when you know the odds of success are slim, if nonexistent, but you know that you couldn't live with yourself if you didn't at least try. This is when you keep being told the world you want will never exist, but you refuse to stop believing that it will if you just keep trying. It's humanities greatest strength and it's worst weakness, the voice that allows heroes to triumph over evil and villains to win battles nobody thought they would. Hope, like all tools, doesn't care who uses it. 

     That doesn't mean that hope isn't a good thing. I think that hope is one of the things that makes us humans. Most living beings don't hope for a world that's different then what they have, they just try their best to live in the world they were given. Humans are different. From the time we stood up on our own two feet, we've been shaping our world to suit our needs. Now, more then ever, we need to remember that strength isn't defined by victory and what makes a person good isn't knowing that they have all the answers. What makes someone strong is standing by something they value even if they know others disagree. I say this knowing there are many people alive right now who believe things that history will rightfully hate them for. I also know that it wasn't that long ago that most minorities were denied a voice by mainstream society who viewed them as aberrant, who didn't want to have to face the fact that society as they knew it might not be perfect. I don't know if the things I believe are right and good, but I know that I have the right to live in society. I will never get everything I ask for, and that's a good thing, but I have the right to ask for what I want and be told, "If you go down the path everybody else is going, you'll eventually get it." Too often, society won't give that to me or to people like me. Too often, we have to work harder or get luckier because people aren't willing to listen. I don't want to hear any excuses like, "that's just the way life is." Feudalism was once common, but nobody in America right now would be willing to live under it. The world I want is more then possible, and I won't stop fighting until I get it.    

A Lucky Human

      I've been on my own for about two years now. I've learned a lot, but the most important thing I think I've learned is that as far as humans go, I'm incredibly lucky. Not just because I have a necklace that helps me fight Nightmares, or because I have a dreamworld of my own, but because no matter how many crimes I commit, I never get caught. 

   Not that I've committed a lot of crimes. Mostly I just sleep in alleyways or on benches. I must look like a druggie, but I don't get stopped by the watch. I did steal a Journal and a pen from one of the shops, mostly because I missed writing things down like I did in school. I didn't realize it before, but apparently you can keep real objects in a Dreamworld if you focus hard enough. I don’t write much, just what I've noticed going on, which isn't much. 

    I'm also lucky enough to avoid the gods when I enter the dreamworlds attached to the cities they run. I don't think they'd like a human who goes lucid as often as I do. It's not illegal, but it is deeply frowned upon, as it destroys the integrity of the dreamworlds, or something. The thing is, I'm pretty sure everyone, human or otherwise, knows the dreamworlds aren't real, and looks at them as a representation of the skill and craftsmanship of the nightmare who created it and nothing more. I suppose pride is a much a problem for nightmares as it is for people, so they probably like to pretend their worlds are realer than they actually are. 

   My friendship with Alex has also made me grateful for not needing to eat. Sleeping every night is bad enough, but eating would be incredibly inconvenient. She's told me that those who need to eat are given special privileges, because they usually have a lot more power than the rest of the nightmares, but if you ask me it doesn't seem like a great trade off. 

  One thing that does kind of bother me is that when I wish for something, I usually get it. I know I should feel grateful, but the only that distinguishes reality from the Infinite for me is that when I'm in a dreamworld I can make whatever I want happen. I don't always get what I want, but it happens often enough that I'm beginning to feel unsettled.