February 12th

Felt very panicky when I woke up from this dream.

I needed to get on a train to get to the gym and it was summer and extremely hot. When I got near the train station I noticed it was very busy and as I ran down the stairs I saw my train pull away. I waited ten minutes for another one in ridiculous heat with people pressing around me from all sides and when I eventually got on a train it was no better. I sat down as the heat was getting too much and noticed a hole in my pants so I stood back up and tried to grab onto a hand rail but some girl put her sweaty hand on top of mine so I jumped off at a station that wasn't even mine.

10th February

I remembered my dream a little better last night and as soon as I woke up I made a little note of major events on my phone.

• I roller-bladed to school (very well, I might add)
• I think it was near the end of the school year because we were all sitting around not doing much talking about going to Edinburgh and the summer, but then the head of sixth form told us we couldn't go away because they had planned a trip for the whole of sixth form
• We went on this trip instead, which was to the beach.
• Because we live in England, it was rainy and blowing a gale but that didn't stop us all riding horseback along the beach for the entire day.

The things that are still sticking out in my mind are the roller blades, beach, and horseback riding. I'll probably record my dreams for another week or so to make sure I definitely have enough to work with and I'm starting to take photos of objects or settings from my dreams so I can start turning them into paintings. :-)

8th and 9th of February

Struggled to remember my dreams for the last two nights, so just some bullet points for now

• I ran a marathon
• Afterwards some boys asked me where my glasses were and I realised I lost them along the way

• I was out with my sister and she threw a spider at me.

These seem ridiculously simple but it's honestly all I can remember from the last two nights!

February 7th

I really don't remember much of this dream, except that I was trapped in a weird old house with some friends and there were strange little baby sprite kind of things who latched on to women and never let go, feeding off their blood I think. Tried to escape little sprite things and ended up in a room where a really frail elderly man was sat in a rocking chair and we tried to help him but as soon as we touched him he kind of disintegrated into petals.

That's all I can remember from a very long and warped dream.

Dream Meanings

Dream meanings

Snow – clean start, fresh perspective, indifference, loneliness, neglect

Pull ups – a difficult situation you need to overcome or rise above

Tap dancing – indicates the need to keep up in life for fear of being left behind.

Tattoo – sense of individuality and desire to stand out in the crowd. Alternately, a decision or experience has left a longer lasting effect on you that you didn’t expect.

Party – need to get out and enjoy yourself more

Barley – signifies good health, progress and satisfaction in your life

Fields – freedom and happiness, going through a period of personal growth

Avocado – signifies you will be rewarded if you devote some time and effort to a goal or project (I like this one!)

Steak – trust or utilise your instincts more or you are getting to the heart of something

Running but not moving as fast as you’d like represents lack of self confidence

Bench – reflects your tendency to procrastinate or push things to the side (oops)

Bear – bears represent independence, strength, death and renewal (or resurrection). Bears are the cycle of life in dreams.

Sandwich – suggests the pressure being put on you in life (yes! Trying to get good grades to get into uni is very pressuring and stressful)

Boy – if you are female and dream you are a boy it means you are developing masculine aspects of character (cue gym comments).

Sea 
To see the sea in your dream represents your subconscious and the transition between your subconscious and conscious.

I thought this was strange as it was one of the first dreams I had after deciding on my project and it basically explains what I want to do in this project!

Sorry for the note form but I didn’t feel the need to write them up properly as I’ll be turning some of these into art anyway. I’ll carry on recording and interpreting my dreams for more inspiration, but so far I really like the sea, boy, bear and field interpretations and I have some ideas for how to illustrate them!

February 6th

More confusing dreams. I'm hoping they'll settle down soon but I haven't been sleeping very well lately. Fingers crossed I'll soon return back to "normal".

Okay so dream 1:

• It snowed again and the teachers at school decided it should be students who shovel the snow away from the buildings.
• We shovelled, they watched and kept making up odd little tasks for us to do, as if shovelling a foot of snow wasn't enough. Mine included:

1. Learn how to do a handstand for a minute
2. Ten pull ups (I've recently learned I can't do pull ups)
3. Bench press
4. Learn to tap dance.

Most memorable thing(s) - snow, pull ups, headstand (upside down?)

The wind then woke me up by rudely knocking a bin over so that dream was interrupted. Once I managed to fall back asleep, this happened:

• I went to a party, I think it might have been a new year's party.
• I got a tattoo - uh oh.
• I decided it'd be a good idea to walk home and somehow didn't get home for three days.
• My mother saw my tattoo and stopped talking to me (I don't blame her, it wasn't a great tattoo - just a huge tribal all over my arm)
• Went downstairs for dinner and during my absence my step-dad had bought a field, a combined harvester and some other farming supplies and decided we were only going to eat fresh, home-grown produce from now on.
• This would have been fine by me except the only things he was growing were tomatoes, barley and rosemary.
• We had barley and tomato soup for dinner.
• My tattoo turned out to be temporary as half of it peeled off at the table.

Most memorable thing(s) - tattoo (temporary), barley, field, party. 

I think tonight or tomorrow I'm going to start looking up some meanings to the most significant objects in my dreams lately. I've already started taking some photos for a Dream Inventory (something the artist Jane Gifford created using little paintings).

February 5th

My dream last night seemed to last forever but essentially was very simple.

• It was Valentine's day so I was planning on having a heart shaped steak for dinner.
• Lots of angry vegans showed up apparently just out of nowhere at my house.
• I ate about ten avocados instead to keep them happy.

That's pretty much it. In my compositions I wanted to include literal paintings or photographs of my dreams but then also any interesting meanings behind them, but I don't think any dream interpretation website will know what to do with "heart shaped steak and avocados". We'll see.

February 4th

Last night I only slept for around 2 hours through the whole night and what dreams I did have were hugely disorientating with lots of flashing colours and sounds. I had been reading Io Non Ho Paura before I went to bed and I basically dreamed out a section from the book, in Italian and all. Whether the Italian was correct is a whole different story but in my dream I knew it was in Italian.

The only real thing I can remember is that the story of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of Lazarus of Bethany was prominent, something the protagonist of the book also has a dream about after seeing a body in a hole in the ground. No real images or faces, just the notion of the story floating around my head. 

I've been thinking about whether I want to change my question to Layers so that I can focus more exactly on dreams and what they could mean, through saying Explore the layers of my subconscious. I'm not entirely sure yet though.  

Dream from February 3rd

Last night's dream was actually pretty straightforward and a little dull.

It was a Monday morning and all the snow was back. I was walked to school but when I got there, Beth (friend who does media at school) told me we were supposed to be filming for her music video that day and that I was dressed all wrong and my hair wasn't right. I apologised and tried to run back home to get my stuff but as I was running I wasn't actually getting anywhere.

I hate that type of dream running, it makes me feel so helpless. Thankfully I wasn't being chased by anyone or anything, just being waited on by an angry Beth.

Jane Gifford created a Dream Inventory featuring one or two items that she remembered most vividly from her dreams so at the end of each post I'll try and come up with one of two single objects. Today's would have to be my black Dr. Martens. I was very aware that I was wearing these as I tried to run through the snow.