dream database management

Because dreams are serious content and you need to manage that shit.

The problem with handwritten dream recording is searchability. If you record dreams with any regularity, finding a handwritten dream from a couple years earlier can be challenging if you aren't sure of the approximate date. Finding patterns and recurring themes is also difficult and time consuming when having to go through stacks of notebooks.

I keep track of all of my dreams in blogger. That's right, the same thing I use to keep this blog.

Benefits:

1. Record more details -- I can type way faster than I can write. The faster I can record a dream, the more likely I'll retain details.
2. Search engine -- like most people, I forget many of my dream pretty quickly. Like last week I dreamed of planes flying in a horizontal formation. I quickly checked and found out I dreamed of that before.
3. Tags -- One dream can have countless symbols and themes. Tags are helpful for tracking. For instance, once I clicked on my "face" tag -- and in each "face" dream over the course of several months I was able to see a step-by-step transformation. (Seaching-->Decay-->New) I wouldn't have picked up on this if I didn't have the ability to easily group dreams by content.


But wait, you don't want your archenemy to get a Google alert informing him of your dream where you give him a tug job in a vat of pudding, do you? You sure don't!

You want the benefits of the content management database, but not the publishing part. You can share your choice, edited dreams on your regular blog, or FB, over dinner or wherever. For your dream database, you want a safe place where you aren't inhibited from recording your absolute groddy gnarliness.

That's easy enough. You make it so you're the only one who can view your dream database by doing the following:

Basic settings: Select NO for "Add your blog to our listings?" and "Let search engines find your blog?" and "Show Email Post links?"

Site Feed: Select NONE for "Allow Blog Feeds"

Permissions: Select "Only blog authors"

Then log out of blogger and make sure you can't access your dream database before you log back in and start recording.


Some people claim patterns and themes don't appear in their dreams, but they're wrong. They're just not keeping track. People claim lots of things about what their dreams don't do, but they don't have the dream data to back up their dismissals--because they don't keep any data.

And they think their uninformed, unsubstantiated denials somehow make them rational, reasonable people. Because dreams are meaningless and worthless. They know this to be true by the testament of ignorance.

Can't argue with that.