Packing my bag and checking it twice

Had a really stressful night's sleep. Nothing transpired over the past few days that could account for it. But, it was probably brought on by a strange dream from earlier this morning, which I can still vividly remember.

Doctors suggest we forget 95% of what we dream.

Every once in a while I get a doozy where it's still going on despite my being fairly certain I'm awake in the real world.

The heart is running at an elevated rate, and when I fully wake up, I'm really stressed, as if I'd run a 5k the night before.

* * *

This morning's dream involved a return to playing ice hockey, and primarily about getting dressed to play.

(Most people reading this have no idea of how slow I was at getting suited up when I first started playing ice hockey.

I used to get to the rink 60-90 minutes before game time just to make sure I had plenty of time. Yet, somehow, it was pretty certain I'd be one of the last people to leave the locker room.

Out of necessity I cured that problem, back in the 1990s, when I went away to hockey camp.)

It is my first time back on the ice after a prolonged stoppage. I don't exactly remember why I had the hiatus.

WILL MY LEGS HOLD OUT?? WILL I ACTUALLY PLAY DECENTLY OR SIMPLY BE A PYLON??

(I went skating last December for the first time in about three years and it was also the first time since I'd hyperextended both knees the year before. I felt like I was learning to skate anew. Very unsettling and I almost wanted to cry. But, as in baseball, there should be no crying in hockey!)

I don't know any of the players, except one. Most have already headed out to the ice while I'm still getting ready.

My equipment is strewn all over the small white cinderblock room. I go to grab something. But, can't find it!

(I still vividly remember one game where I got all dressed. On my way out to the rink I realized I had forgotten to put my shin guards on. Thank God I didn't take a shot in warm-ups as I certainly would have broken something.)

The clock on the wall keeps ticking and pretty much everyone else is out on the ice for warm-ups already. Only one returning player remains; urging me to hurry up.

ANXIETY IS CLIMBING!!

Causing more frustration is the fact I'm not the only new player to the team. My sister is joining. She has no problems getting dressed.

(To the best of my knowledge she has never played hockey. Has never had the urge to go to one of the NCWHL's Give Hockey A Try Days, nor even strapped on a pair of hockey skates, which makes her being in the dream even more odd.

Co-rec teams are common these days, especially at the lower levels. Checking is expressly forbidden, though we always reminded ourselves the rule was "No Checking Does NOT necessarily mean No Contact.")

The clock keeps ticking as I struggle to get ready. I hear the buzzer off in the distance signifying the game is about to start.

WHERE ARE THOSE DAMN SHIN GUARDS?!?!?

A few more minutes are gone, and the first period starts. The veteran player comes back in asking how things are going?

"It's going" is about all I can answer as I look for a packing tape gun to throw on some tape over my hockey socks that now adorn my shin guards. (I think the only place I've actually seen packing tape used was in Mystery, Alaska.)

Glancing at the clock again, half of the first period has now vaporized. But, I cannot locate my hockey pants.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?!? THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!!!

Finally locating them, I step my skates through the leg openings and pull the pants up.

Grabbing my helmet and gloves, I shuffle out of the room, only to freak out again. Light jersey or dark jersey? I'm wearing white at this point.

(I always made a point of emailing my teammates to remind them which jersey to bring, only to have the league switch us from 'Home' to 'Visiting' team one week. After that, I always brought BOTH!).

I've now wasted two-thirds of the First Period yet, strangely, people are still skating around as if warming up…and my jersey has morphed into a matching black. Don't ask me how, as my subconscious never explained that.

Sitting quickly on the bench, I stretch my legs before gingerly jumping on the ice to take a couple quick laps…and then it happens.

I WAKE UP!!!

End of dream. No idea how I played; how my sister played. Did we win or lose the game?

So the moral of the story is to always check your hockey bag and make sure everything you need is in there, and to give yourself ample time to prepare.

(And to, perhaps, not eat Wasabi Hummus before bedtime! But, that's a story for another time…)

I had a dream…

Apologies to Martin Luther King, Jr. for borrowing his famous saying, but that's what came immediately to mind.

* * *

Have you ever had a dream that you immediately wake up from and can remember pretty much every thing that went on? I think most of us can say yes, to some extent or another.

A couple of days ago I had such a dream, and I can still remember pretty much all the major points as if I was experiencing it right now.

Not exactly sure what kind of company it was that I was working for. It had recently been taken over by some bigger company, and I was supposed to be  on the sideline of a high school football game the very next day.

Now here's where it got strange. For whatever reason, I had been given a metal water bottle earlier in the week. I had been carrying it around all the time, and it was supposed to record the sights and sounds of being on the sideline during the game.

At the meeting, I was shocked when the manager told me that this recorder had been live all week long. Every place I'd went. Every thing I'd said. EVERYTHING had been recorded into their database. Needless to say, I was very upset as I had been expecting it to only be active during the actual assignment.

We went back and forth about this for some time before I finally told them I would quit and then demanded they removed all recorded information from their computers. We were in the middle of removing records when I woke up. Or more exactly, my baying Jack Russell, Sally, woke me up, and I had to get up.

* * *

This dream brought to mind two things.

First off, what would you do if you found yourself in this situation. I studied to be a journalist when I went to the University of Montana (GO GRIZ!!). This was back before the Internet played such an important part in everyone's daily life. When most people wrote a physical letter rather than email through a computer program.

Journalism was a specialized field, with certain rules of form and style. People were columnists, not bloggers. In fact, the term "blogging" didn't even come into vogue until mid-1999, when Peter Merholtz coined it as a contraction of Web Log, which John Barger started using only a couple of years earlier. Now, as newspapers, one by one, are shuttering their doors anyone, with a computer and an Internet connection, can call themselves a blogger and share their wit and wisdom. (I can see the comments from the Peanut Gallery right now!!).

There's tons of awesome goodness on the Web where a person can have absolutely no idea about something, but within a few clicks of their keyboard have more answers than the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of bad stuff that's totally inaccurate, and often misleading. The reader has to decide if they believe it, which may be hard depending on how much they knew to begin with.

Second thing brought to mind was regarding privacy and how much the freedom of information on the Internet has eroded that. Not so much little by little, but in a big "fire hose" deluge as of late. In fact, Google likes to use that phrase, fire hose, when talking about developers connecting to their collection of information and links.

And every time there's a minute change to the privacy statement at Google or Facebook people are screaming bloody murder as if they're giving away Social Security and bank account numbers. In reality, they are not publishing using anything that is not either publicly available or that you, as a user of some form or another has voluntarily provided them.

I scratch my head when people complain so much as if they expect these FOR PROFIT companies to give them what they want due to some altruistic belief.

In September 2011, Simon & Schuster published a book by American journalist Jeff Jarvis, called Public Parts. In it Jarvis argues against the common public perception that the Internet, and especially "social media," are making America a dumbed down society, surviving on sandwich-sized bites of information at a time.

Jarvis goes on to suggest  Society needs to protect the Internet as it belongs to everyone and for everyone's use. Just look at last year's Arab Spring. There is little doubt that had it not been for publicly available social media outlets, such as Twitter and Facebook, many countries in the Middle East and North Africa would still be under the thumb of their dictatorships.

People just need to make sure they educate themselves when they fill in their private information to understand where it might be used by the organization they're giving it to. They also need to understand it WILL be used by the organization for their needs, which might include sharing it with other organizations.