That sucks - especially if they're still happening despite being retired for several years?

I don't understand how the brain selects what to dream about.

Last night I had a dream that I'd discovered I had long hair growing from my feet - like several inches of head hair all over - and I didn't want to shave it because the stubble would be painful.

I'm guessing that came at least in part from getting stabbed in the foot yesterday by what was either a splinter or a short piece of hair, and then briefly examining the sole of my foot in case there were more - but why dream about that rather than any number of other trivial/unusual events... unless I did, and that's just one which happened to occur before waking... *shrug*

I don't know, and I'm suspicious of explanations, particularly those that say the reason is some particular thing, as various alleged dream-analysts do. I mean, we often dream about things that are on our minds. About 1000 years ago when I was learning COBOL I had a dream which appeared to make sense while I was dreaming it, that was actually a COBOL program. I've dreamed about places I've just been, video games I'm playing and so on. But as for why any given dream at any particular time, and how the subject matter, what there is of it, occurs - no idea. 

But I do find them interesting. The ones that create a mood of some sort that persists into the day and beyond are strange. Also, the ones where you wake up wondering whether something is true, often something very unlikely. I dreamed about my old university town and a shared house in particular where I was going to visit somebody. I couldn't remember where it was when I woke up and it took me most of the morning to fully realise that it never existed, and neither did the person I dreamed I was visiting.

 

Heh. I don't recall ever having made someone up - people are either strangers/NPCs or representations of people I do actually know.

I've definitely invented locations, but mostly they tend to be corruptions and/or combinations of real places - it's weird when it's somewhere I know well and can imagine with reasonable accuracy in my awake brain, but my sleeping brain renders those memories differently.

Have you given up already?

 (fail)

"It should be possible to make at least one post a day that is worth reading, right?"

Maybe not.

:(