Dragons, Creative Flow Secrets, and an Encore

I was sleeping on the living room floor of an unfamiliar house. While laying there in the dark, I cracked my eyes open just enough to see the shadow of someone crouching and watching me sleep. And they seemed to have dragon wings?

Then within the dream, I dozed off once more, and when I opened my eyes again, I saw a woman sitting on a nearby couch watching me.

I immediately sat up and asked, almost gasping, “What is going on?”

“Some old man was watching you sleep,” she said. “And an old lady was sitting on this couch watching you too.”

I immediately got angry. She knew people were watching me, but didn’t try to do anything about it herself? Why did she allow these strangers into this random house to stalk me or whatever?

“You don’t understand!” I yelled at her. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you do something!”

Then she came back with,”No, you don’t understand!”

And then she started singing.

Even if we’re far apart, I’ll always love you…

It was a Whitney Houston meets Mariah Cary style ballad that felt like it could have been popular in the mid to late 90’s or early 2000’s. Songs aren’t common in my dreams, but they happen.

As she sang, I was hit with kaleidoscopic imagery, shifting from dark royal blue to red while filled with rotating white hearts and repeating images of her face. And I was like, why is she singing this song to me?

Once she was done, the dream ended, but the reverb of her voice kept ringing in my ears, the vocals were so powerful. I couldn’t even be angry anymore.

There was this woman who transformed into a dragon. The moment she transformed, I felt like I was her—like I had transformed too. But afterwards she became a creature that was totally separate from me, and I was just watching her.

She was fearsome with a dragon body, a long tail, and human woman face. One half of her body was green and the other half was black. She let out a scream and a roar before disappearing in a blink. The dream ended with her disappearance.

It felt like she was crushed out of existence. Just gone. And I couldn’t help feeling a little bit sad as I awoke. Maybe all she needed was a little more love?

It had been a busy day, and I wanted to feel as peaceful as possible. As I crawled into bed and drifted to sleep, I imagined myself as a dragon, half green and half black with golden accents and golden wings, coiled and resting peacefully. Dragon woman, you are protected. You are safe. You are loved…

I met Levi in dream space. This time, his white hair was short, but long enough to sweep over his forehead. He wore a white robe like some Greek statue, golden ornaments in his hair, and had the most intricate and ornate dragon wings I had ever seen, made of pure shining gold.

Then I proceed to put him through the wringer, being all like, “Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

His lovely face looked at me in wide-eyed shock. He didn’t say a word as I continued to complain to him about how no one tells me anything and fussed about why he’s always like this.

The following night, while still awake, I had an epiphany about my creative process. I was reflecting on how over the past month, I had been growing lemon balm plants to make tea. When it’s time for me to pick the leaves, I go for the larger, more mature leaves and collect them together to store in the fridge. I realized that the same process applies to my ideas.

When picking from my ideas, I need to periodically review the “leaves” of my notes and journals, and feel out what is the most mature and ready to be made into “tea”–more complete writings and projects.

I don’t have to demand an idea to become something. I only need to collect whatever comes and pay attention to what feels ready to be something more. Understanding that I can approach my work this way relieves so much pressure because I don’t have to be overwhelmed by my ideas or force projects into being.

My ideas need time to ferment, like fine wine. I’ve explored the concept of collecting ideas more in-depth in my book, I Want to Do All the Things: Finding Balance as a Multipotentalite, Polymath, and Renaissance Soul, but still this approach is totally new for me. It’s such a clear and simple way to handle my creative overflow, that I wondered why this took so long to click for me. Anyways, the same night of having that realization, I had this dream again:

So once again I met with Levi: white hair, white clothes, golden ornaments, golden dragon wings.

But this time, he was even sitting in a golden chair, and when I approached him I was like, “Hey, why didn’t you tell me about all of this earlier?”

He replied with a little shrug, “I just didn’t know what to say.”

And then I said, “But you should have told me…”

Then I continued to comfortably complain, like we’re an old couple—a strange inner marriage of opposites between me and the muse that lives within me and that strangely is me. He knows that without my more conscious self coming around to give him a hard time, life in that heavenly sky palace would be totally boring.