Dream Too Hard

People laughed when I shared my dream of sending a bird into space.  Why should dogs, chimps, monkeys and a few other random animals enjoy the glory of traveling to space?  None of them can even fly.  Perhaps I dream too hard, or perhaps I was just designed to attempt to achieve more than what is deemed possible.  I don’t know, but I won’t let the laughter of others deter me from my dreams, even if they are funny.

Building dreams is time consuming and the path is full of unexpected detours.  Sometimes work gets in the way of the dream.  There is an undeniable and universal truth to doing mechanical work in an uncomfortable position with limited space to move:  it sucks.  My neck, back, arms and hands are sore in ways that only vaguely resemble having just completed a rigorous workout.  The hours I had to put in on my back on a creeper with my hands over my head the last few days are taking their toll.  It is hard to get leverage to work in that position, and it’s even harder to hold up my arms after the first hour.  I thought the answer for the second day was to take more frequent breaks, but that just made it more difficult to get back into position and back into the groove of the small, uncomfortable repetitive motions I needed to finish the job.

The worst part is that my project is no farther along now than when I started.  I have managed to make a mess of things though.  Good thing we have a professional cleaning crew on retainer.  They are going to have a complete job to do if I ever finish.

The pain of at least temporary defeat makes my actual pain that much worse.  Failure is hanging just over my head like that cloud of death from the Volvo dealership.  I can’t see it, but I know it’s there.  The solution has been on a mission to evade and elude at all costs.  I just can’t seem to make it happen, and it gets more difficult as I become even more sore and useless.

My mental fatigue has been enhanced by uncomfortable sleep.  I don’t think it is a coincidence that I’ve been having strange dreams while I haven’t been able to make much progress on the project.  I’m sore and I had to labor in a haze of Liquid Wrench and WD-40.  Neither of which has helped loosen the unyielding metal I am combating.

Sometimes my dreams are so vivid that I wake up sore from whatever happened in them.  Starting out sore makes the wake up even worse.  Heavy dreams for me do not equate to quality sleep.  Adjustments must be made during the day to compensate for my lack of sleep and altered mind state. These are not easy adjustments.  It is difficult to plan strategic power naps when the whole organization depends on me.  I think I need a deputy.

I tried to sleep on the problem again with the hope that my mind would put it together without my help.  That did not happen.  I did have another hard dream.  These dreams seem so real.  I took photos of a vacuum cleaner in my dream last night on my phone.  Thankfully I didn’t see that picture when I checked the photo library.  It would be troubling to learn that I might be sleepwalking and taking random photos.  So far the evidence doesn’t support that.

The routine is the same with only slight variations and different dreams.  I close my eyes and fall asleep.  I have a bizarre dream, the other night I was being chased through the mall by Shop Vacs.  There were some mega discounts available but I couldn’t shake the vacuum cleaners long enough to capitalize.  That is frustrating.  I also can’t explain why vacuums have featured in multiple recent dreams.  I like them as much as the next person, but I don’t spend my days thinking about them.  Before I can make my heroic escape, it is morning again.  My sense of time disappears so I am left thinking I just got into bed.  My body’s fatigue level is also telling me the same, but the clocks and sunlight don’t lie.  Unless I am activating some form of time travel in my sleep.  That would explain why I feel like I’ve only slept for five minutes.  I’m going to need to further study this phenomenon.

I've decided to try a holistic approach to fix this.  I’ve removed all of the chemical solutions from the work area and will wear my filtered respirator when I go back into the pit.  I suspect I should have been wearing it from the start, but it gets in the way in such tight spaces and I don’t want to touch it when my hands are covered with oil and grime.  I am prepared to deploy the full arsenal of AcMo tools on this project if that is what it requires.  If that fails, I will entice an unsuspecting tech to attempt to complete the job.

I would prefer to win this battle myself.  I can’t let a simple recalcitrant part destroy my life.  My clients would abandon AcMo if they knew we were defeated by an expired part.  I can’t let that happen.  I won’t let that happen.  I hope to report soon that the part has lost its unexplainable war against me and I have recovered my dreams and proper sleep cycle.  My sanity depends upon it.

I still plan to continue dreaming about achieving the impossible.  The detours along the way fortify my resources.  Even if I miss, something spectacular is bound to happen as a result.