It's Not Magic, It's Science!

When I was young I had a recurring dream/nightmare. In the dream I would go swimming and when I tried to surface I would find that I was trapped under the water. I would wake with my heart pounding and breathing fast. As I got older the dream happened with less frequency but proved to have some lingering effects. To this day I can't deal with being held under water. Just the other day day I was swimming with my son and he was trying to push me under the water and I had a mini-freak out. I put the kibosh on that game from now until forever. These days I recognize that dream for what it was - an anxiety dream. The reason I stopped having the dream wasn't because I stopped experiencing anxiety (quite the opposite in fact). The dream hasn't stopped, it has just changed into different anxiety-inducing experiences, ones more apropos to my present-day life. Since becoming an adult the  anxiety dream I've had most frequently is one that I've found is very common among my fr...

It's August 2021 and I'm knee deep in summer vacation. After a month of my boy being in summer camp, we are spending the rest of vacation at the beach...and loving every second of it. But, in the back of my mind, I am always thinking about the coming school year (which starts on my birthday no less). And now that it's August, the thoughts that were hanging out in the back of my mind have started to creep forward. I'm trying hard to enjoy what is left of the care free dog days of summer but the teacher part of my brain can't be quieted. So here I am at 10pm, in the bottom bunk of my son's bed, getting some of those thoughts down on virtual paper so maybe they will quiet the heck down! Here is where my brain jumble is right now as a neatly organized, bulleted list: I haven't stepped foot into a classroom since March 12, 2020 (except for two days in September when I wasn't sure if I would get a medical accommodation for the 2020-2021 school year). For the l...