It's always a trip when my brain starts reprogramming itself, because the dreams get crazy... and exhausting. Not bad, just tiring, so that by 5 a.m. or so it's easier to wake up and just wait until I get tired enough to really conk out. Last night the dreams were about being in a small clear pod with a few other women, tumbling out the back of a pickup truck at high elevation, and plummeting far, far down to the ground while I screamed, "God protect us! God protect us!" right before the others informed me that we'd already hit the ground.

And then, the one about being in the same pod, rolling down a conveyor belt in a dark tunnel toward a sign that said, "RADIATION." And I dug my way out of the pod with my fingernails and press the alarm button to make the conveyor belt stop, again and again... which it did...

That sort of thing.

This all started when my mother-in-law died, on February 21, I think. It started off a long chain of processes which forced me to compare how people in my family died. They died bitter and alone, and scared, and without fanfare or any loving ceremonies -- unlike my mother-in-law.

Before that I had literally been praying for my compulsion to work on my business to be lifted somewhat, because I felt imprisoned. I felt like a horrible taskmaster. Not only did I work all day long, I worked all night long and on weekends, too. This was all accompanied by the horrible feeling that if I stopped even for a minute, my competitors would overtake me.

Then my mother-in-law died, and we were there for over a week (it was a full Catholic funeral), and when I came back everything was topsy-turvy.

Right now, I'm taking a break from work. I haven't seriously worked for going on two weeks now. My excuse, when I bother to have one, is that I'm doing taxes, which is true, and laborious. But that's not really it. I'm just making space for my brain to rewire itself, which is hard to do what I'm constantly scurrying after the next project like some robotic gerbil with no end to the hamster wheel in sight.

Instead, I sit at my computer, or on the couch with a book, or outside with an edging spade in my hand, and I ask myself over and over, "What do I want to do? What do I want to do?"

There's a pleasure with asking that's there no matter how often I do it. And this too makes it hard to go to bed. It's easier to sleep without that nagging sense of possibility and opportunity hanging around the hours.