Dreams by Decade

I used to keep a dream diary with a great amount of dedication. Some recent dreams caused me to wonder how the dreams I've been having lately would compare with those I had twenty years ago. And so, I opted to make a chart of the people who have shown up in my dreams over the course of years each separated by a decade.

The years I chose were 1991, 2001, and 2011. This posed a few problems, however. So far, in 2011, I've recorded seven dreams. In 2001, I recorded none. And in 1991, I recorded something like one hundred (I was indeed dedicated). So clearly that wasn't going to work. I did the best I could, by choosing instead of 2001 the year 1999. That year, I recorded three dreams. And instead of all of 1991, I chose to record review only the nine dreams from July of that year. Hence, the decades are now more on an equal par.

I don't know why I should have been surprised, but the people in the dreams varied too much for me to actually chart them by name, with lots of folks only showing up once. Folks who showed up most frequently back in July 1991 included my mom, my friend/coworker/former high school classmate Mike, and my boss Dorothy. A girl I had a crush on at the time only showed up in two dreams that month. No one showed up more than once in any of the dreams for 1999 or 2011.

So I needed a different strategy. I opted to break the dream people into categories. Certainly, some of the categories are kind of a judgment call. Take, for example, Mike. Do I stick him under high school, work, or friend? I opted in such cases to place a person under the category where I first became most familiar with the person, so Mike went under high school (though in the dreams that month, he was most often at work).

Here's how the categories break down for each of the three years chosen.

1991

1999

2011

I suppose some might be interested in the celebrity category. The celebrities to show up in the July 1991 dreams were Will Smith (who was still the Fresh Prince at the time) and Dave Letterman. And in 1999, it was Alex Trebek.

So what is interesting to me about these charts is the way in which the things my dreams obsess about has changed. In 1991, even though high school was three years behind me, classmates from that period still figured most prominently. Relatives and coworkers also did. I dreamed a lot about work, as I worried a lot about it as well.

In 1999, my church was going through some large changes still, and so many of my thoughts revolved around that. By then high school no longer featured so prominently, though strangely, grad school, finished two years before, now was showing up.

In 2011, church seems even bigger, but I can say, from looking over the dreams, that actually few people I know have shown up in dreams this year, which skewers the stats significantly. Most dreams (four of seven) involved complete strangers. Interestingly, high school has left the mix completely, and even work isn't showing up.

But in all years over the decades, relatives show up with some frequency, even though I have little contact with my family compared to 1991.

My Ties

A coworker was remarking on how all my ties seem to be given to me. I think every time she asks where I got a tie, she happens to do so on a day when I'm wearing one that was a gift. I'm the only one at work who wears ties consistently, so they tend to get comments. Anyway, the following chart confirms that in fact I have actually purchased more of my ties than I have been given ties:
Still, I am surprised by how many ties have come to me as gifts. I think, because I wear them, people find them safe gifts for me. And I will wear virtually any tie I'm given. That doesn't necessarily mean that I think they fit my style. Breaking down ties I love versus ties I'm not really into, it's clear that if I picked out the tie to begin with, I'm more likely to love it, which I guess makes sense:
I was also interested in the color of the ties I have and how that affects whether I like them. Here's that breakdown:
So what piece of advice would I give to someone who is handing me a tie? Go for blue, green, or lavendar, and I'm more likely to like it. Green, it kind of overdone, though, as the above shows. I actually tend to like yellow ties also, but I keep their number to a minimum.

Crushes by Hair Color

I've never quite understood why hair color is even something people pay attention to when talking of people they are attracted to. Sure, I might find some blonde gals attractive, but that won't mean all blondes are, nor that I won't find a redhead or a brunette or a black-haired gal even more so. It really depends on the whole woman--figure, face, haircut itself. Add in personality as well--I've seen some very pretty women who fairly quickly didn't appeal to me because of their general demeanor, and a few other less-immediately physically attractive gals have grown in appeal because they were simply so much fun.

Anyway, I very unscientifically have tried to sort through gals I've had crushes on over the years to see if any hair color overwhelms, or if it's more or less even. Of course, there's also the question of what constitutes a crush. There have been girls I was interested in, but I wouldn't have called it a crush--I guess because it was less intense, as she was not someone I spent a lot of time thinking about when she wasn't around me. So what I'm trying to restore to memory here are the women, from high school on, who I spent a lot of time fantasizing about--even obsessing over--the possibility of being in a relationship with. (Unfortunately crushes are what most of my dating life has consisted of. Rare is the girl I actually had a crush on who accepted a date from me, and rarer still such a girl who I managed to score repeat dates with.)

Looks like I'm a guy who prefers blondes. Of course, if we take into account that brunette outnumbers other hair colors, then the preference becomes even more apparent (just as the absence of redheads might be explained by their relative paucity in the population as a whole--the most rare of hair colors). Growing up, redheads appealed the least to me, though I've come to appreciate their beauty in their own right as I've gotten older. I can think of a few I had an interest in--even a strong interest--but I can't think of any who inspired a full-on/lost-my-mind crush, as I'm defining it here.

Writing by Genre and Draft by Year

So August is typically a month I devote each year to rereading stories, poems, and other writing projects of mine to determine what will be submitted over the coming year and what I will rewrite over the coming year. Given that, I thought it might also be interesting to review how many first drafts I've written each year, which genres those pieces were in, and how many subsequent drafts I completed that year.

The following charts indicate by year stories, poems, and chapters of longer projects accordingly. The first chart shows items by genre, with first drafts versus later drafts split out on each bar. The second chart shows items by first draft versus later drafts with items split out by genre on each bar. Finally, the third chart breaks everything out. Poems are a bit of an odd creature here, since I don't keep track of drafts of those, so I can only note how many were written.

For the longer projects, which may or may not have chapters, I've designated five thousand words as an average chapter length (since some novels had no chapters and some have short ones) and divvied up the material accordingly. Screenplays count as three, according to the three-act structure of screenplays. Furthermore, because stories I've worked on, especially in recent years, have often been from wholly conceived cycles (that is, the pieces work together so that the material falls somewhere between a story and a novel), I've indicated these types of stories separately.



There was a drop-off in 2000. In 1999 was when I first had home-access to the Internet, and much of my time during the next few years was spent online, chatting with my new toy and trying to get dates. In part, I'd been so discouraged by lack of publication and lack of writer friends and so encouraged by online correspondence that for a while I did not make writing much of a priority. When I moved to my current home, however, that changed, because I was now back among a literary set and because I'd become discouraged in the dating arena much as I had been in the publication one.