Dreamy Prompt

I'm not a post about dreams guy, and i'm about to post about dreams, but not post A Dream I Had.


Lately, I've been having weirdly specific anxiety dreams where almost all of the dream is something that is definitely going to happen. I don't mean, I Am Having Psychic Dreams!!!! I mean, I go to sleep the night before I have to split books, and my dreams are about splitting books. Or I go to sleep the night before I travel to meet family, and I dream about traveling to meet family. And every aspect of the dream is very realistic, except one thing entirely out of whack.

In typical Waiting Tables type dreams, the aspect that is out of whack is the anxiety part. For example, a server calls out sick and suddenly you have five thousand tables, or else you get stuck talking to a table for a few minutes, and during those few minutes your other table has become unreasonable monsters demanding that you are fired.
In these dreams, all of the anxiety stuff has been real, but the out of whack part is often something that makes the anxiety dream seem disproportionately hilarious upon waking up.

For example, dreaming of splitting the books, a two day job, you must do in one day because a snow storm has delayed the books, and you know the person who said they're going to come in and help, isn't going to come in and help. In the dream, you fall behind because you are helping people in the store, and you really have to go the bathroom but you can't because the store is filled with loiterers. When the loiterers finally do empty out, you run to the bathroom. And while in the bathroom, you lean against the hot tub, and eat some of the fresh cashews dipped in melty fondue-like chocolate, and someone comes by with a cheese platter, and you keep checking the temperature of the hot tub, and wondering if you have time to take a quick dip before returning back to your anxiety dream. Like you often do at your work, where the bathroom is some sort of resort with hot tubs and cheese plates and servers and fondue. But when you leave the bathroom, there are three people waiting at the door to the store and they look annoyed. And you are still waaaaay behind in splitting the books.

Or, you're dreaming of that family member who married into your family, who is rude to everyone, especially you, is someone you absolutely have to see the next day. And in this dream they arrive early (they will arrive early in real life too, not because you have prescient dreams but because they are predictable dingleberries). They start arguing with your other family members, and you feel the need to look up to the sky and center yourself before you say something cruel you will not be able to take back, and that's when the discoball descends and there is a dance break where everyone is happy, and there is a duck doing the macarena, and then you are back in the anxiety scenario and decide that something needs to be said (about the dingleberry, not the duck doing the macarena).
I want to believe that these are my subconscious's way of telling me that my anxiety is real but also ridiculous

​I am also thinking of this as a prompt, write about a situation that causes you anxiety but give yourself a brief surreal scene that lets you escape your anxiety and see that it's both valid and ridiculous. Don't let it solve any of your problems, just give it a reprieve before diving back in.