Not always. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. I remember mostly nightmares. That’s for sure.
But dreams. Not always.
So, I think the last dream I remember was about dolphins.
I was swimming with dolphins.
I can tell you my last nightmare if you’d like.
Riots in some old city
And me and him were trying to run away from the riots. And we got into this building, and we tried to secure. And there were other people trying to run away from the street.
So, we let them in.
The bottom of the building was getting overrun.
We kept going up, trying to find the place where to hide.
Someone opened their door and let us in, and then the whole building got overrun.
We managed to get up to the top floor and jump to the next building.
And got through someone’s house and went out on the street and I lost him.
I was panicking because I didn’t know what happened to him and if he got hurt.
And I remember looking for him, crying and screaming his name and I couldn’t find him.
And then suddenly there was this person that was very dear to me.
And she saw me like in the middle of the street, panicking, looking for him. And she grabbed my hand and said, You can’t be here. We’ve got to run.
They’re going to come get us.
My dream, I, I would say, would be to overcome my inner demons.
Just overcome myself. Free myself from myself.
So that would be the ultimate dream.
The most important work, healing trauma.
Repairing my relationship with my soul mate.
Finding different ways to love each other unconditionally and accept each other for who we are instead of trying to change each other.
I love Santa Cruz. I love the vibe. I think people are really nice. I love the weather.
I don’t like the fact that it’s really hard to find jobs here. But aside from that, I have nothing bad to say about Santa Cruz.
You know, I envision just being prosperous and happy.
Providing for the community, you know, and making sure everything’s, you know, happy and get along.
Their gratitude is amazing. And I appreciate that.
It doesn’t matter which community it is. Just, you know, just the people around any community. It makes a difference.
What isn’t an obstacle? You know, it’s an obstacle course. Life is, you know, just depends how you take it. If you go through it, under it, over it, it’s up to you.
I love it. I love Santa Cruz. And it has certain environment that’s unique in its own culture in some way. And that’s why I grew up here. That’s why I live here.
I like to say. Yeah. Dependent. I feel like it depends on the dreams. There’s something in some of those dreams that are very vivid that you wake up or you keep something from that. Like an image or, you know, something you heard or some sort of thought that may have come from that dream.
It’s pretty interesting how some dreams can be just, like, completely unrelated.
And you like I’m glad that it was a dream. It has nothing, no take on real life. But I think that there’s a lot of things to say about kind of like your mental state. Like how dreams kind of inform you about, like, one of the things going on in your life and how sometimes I realized some of the direct stressors in my life would be kind of showing themselves in dreams in some other way, but it wouldn’t like until you kind of rebound yourself out.
You don’t realize how your mind and body act react to those different stimuli.
Yes, it’s a dream that’s maybe not like the happiest dream, but it’s a dream that is like real life where I would it would resemble a lot of my daily life in a way. But it was kind of a little bit like Inception where I’d go into a different place and then I would be in almost a different world.
And I would remember kind of this constant feeling of waking up in my bed, leaving my room, and every time I’d leave my room it was a completely different area outside of my room. T
That was like during high school and I’m, you know, post-college. It’s a dream that I’ve always remembered because it was something that I wanted to wake up from.
And I felt like every time I was waking up, it came to a realization in the dream that I was in a dream and acknowledging that I was in a dream. It was something that I always remember because it was me acknowledging myself dreaming while dreaming.
That was something that kind of clicked. And it has allowed me to have that thought, to look back on dreams and contemplate them. But there’s a lot of times where, right after a dream, you start to think about it and then it’s already gone.
But, yeah, I don’t know. That’s my you know, another dream would be like, I mean, if, like, dreaming, you know, outside of the sake of like dreaming at night, you know, kind of daydreaming, like things that you wish for and whatnot.
I guess I’ve always wanted to be working in a position that allows me to create a difference kind of every day. And I found that a lot of times that’s been in service things, but also I did a more technology related degree and I’ve been focused more on creating–or not creating, but being part of a building up a technical product as a product manager.
My goal is to expand my connections and grow professionally. I’ve been taking a variety of like data science courses trying to further my reach of knowledge just to kind of further better myself. And I feel like every day there’s like something that you can take every day where you can see things on a sunny side or the rainy side.
You know, you can either take failures as learning opportunities or you could use those to weigh you down. And so, there’s been multiple of these situations that I had to learn to learn from my mistakes instead of having them weigh me down because I feel like I would make a lot of mistakes and a lot of my dreams would be tainted by those mistakes because of how much weight I would put on them.
And that’s what I realized too, is like, you know, you can only control as much as you can control in living. Focusing too much, overthinking things, keeps you away from the present.
The most important work I’m doing right now, at least, has been at Cat N Cloud.
Every day you can make someone’s day. A lot of times when someone comes in in the morning to a place to get their coffee or tea, they don’t know what they want, or they’re going on to a next part of their day that has already been kind of repetitive.
It’s easy to get lost in the sauce and just be going through the motions. I think that one thing that’s been good every day is kind of being able to pull people out of that kind of like way of thinking, bringing the present, and adding, something to their day, which is something that you don’t really realize you’re doing it until you get thanked for it later in another future meeting with them.
They tell you about how you’ve inspired them or something you said really helped them out that day. It’s something small. It doesn’t cost anything to say something or to be nice to somebody or show a certain amount of compassion. It’s easy to get trapped nowadays in a way of thinking.
And it’s really nice to be seen and be aware that there’s other people around you that are going through maybe the same thing or are struggling similarly. I think mental health awareness is something that’s been very important today in this world.
And it’s very central to the Santa Cruz community, too, and being very thoughtful of the people around you, and being courteous and not stepping on anyone’s toes. Everyone should be able to live the life that they want to live, the way that they want to live it.
And there shouldn’t be any room for someone’s opinion on how you’re living your life.
I love Santa Cruz. I came here for UC Santa Cruz and I after graduating in 2019, I haven’t wanted to leave.
Oh, I dream often, and I do normally remember my dreams. And I feel like my relationship with them changes a lot.
Sometimes my dreams, like, give me time with people who I’ve lost in my life, and then I must wake up again and it feels like I’m losing them all over. Or sometimes if I think something in my life isn’t bothering me, my dreams will show me that it is something that’s like affecting me and affecting my thought process.
I had an interesting one during last night’s sleep with my childhood home. I was in my bedroom. And my bedroom is small, but in my dream, it seemed so big and like everything was so far away and it was really dark.
It was a weird dream, to be honest.
The most pleasant dream that I remember having recently was with my mom.
She was just hugging me and wrapping me up in her arms and it’s like she was like letting me know that she was thinking about me and proud of my recent accomplishments. And she was letting me know that she’s okay because I worried about that a lot.
I think my biggest goal, like long term goal now is becoming a teacher, an art teacher, specifically. And I think my short-term goal now is establishing like healthy routines, time management, and movement of my body and like moving my body more.
Being able to travel constantly and visit different cultures and capture documents, with documentary photography and writing and telling the stories of people who might not have their stories told or just get overlooked. Or becoming super established in a place and building like a community and just taking care of like my community.
Whether that be having a nonprofit and being able to financially support people who might need financial support.
Yeah, but I would need to be super rich to do that.
The work on myself. I think to fill other people’s cup, you must, like, fill your own cup first and I think it’s taken me a long time to realize that I’ve always just wanted to, like, pour into so many different places instead of pouring into myself first. So, I’m just working on myself right now, working on things that fill me, which is photography, my creative side and going to school, which has been a goal of mine for almost a decade now.
Remember realizing that I’m not in survival mode anymore and realizing that I can, like, do creative things and I can, like, take a beat and work on myself.
Things aren’t weighing down on me. And I feel like I don’t have to be constantly fighting or constantly surviving.
I can just take a day and go on a walk or go to the farmer’s market and eat some organic fruits and vegetables. I have that freedom in my life right now.
Staying consistent.
Well, I absolutely love Santa Cruz. I think it’s a very special place and attracts a lot of special people. I’ve even heard a time or two that it’s safe for sex and that once you’re here, you can’t leave. And if you do leave, then you get called back to Santa Cruz. However, I feel like it’s Santa Cruz is in a transitional period now.
And I feel like as much as our community wants to be like a place for all people, we struggle with turning our backs on certain groups of people like the houseless community and other community members.
I feel like we could be more diverse, more immersive, and more of an actual community for all groups, for all people.
I love Santa Cruz. I love Santa Cruz, and I’m happy to be a community member and I’m happy to do the work and I’m happy to be immersed myself in the downtown community. I just feel like there’s still a lot of work to be done.
