A Strange Dream

I slept properly for the first time in ages. Opening my eyes at nine without waking up in the middle of the night is such a rare thing lately that it was almost moving. I had a feeling I'd had an interesting dream but forgot it quickly and left it at that, and then just now it came back to me. A strange dream with a very large snake and a centipede in it. Maybe it was because I saw a house centipede at home before bed.

To describe it briefly: I was raising a snake, doting on it. I'd grown it enormous, and at some point a centipede appeared and cut it apart. Cut exactly twice. I don't know about the middle section, but the small remaining tail and the head moved on their own and left for somewhere. The centipede's size was no ordinary thing either. About three times the size of a person, unreal-looking, and we got along quite well. Less like I was raising it and more like we shared a house in symbiosis, and it was so large and magnificent that it never even occurred to me to provoke it.

I'm not one for superstition or faith, but since it was an interesting dream I asked an AI to interpret it. It's been a while since I last asked for a dream reading, not since that unusual class in the first semester. Apparently both snakes and centipedes are fairly good omens in East Asian symbolism. I knew snakes were considered good for various reasons, connecting sky and earth and so on, and it seems centipedes are similar. It's a completely pointless flight of fancy, but if I connect it to Patternflow! Something I raised with care is going to transform into a new shape… I think. In a fairly good direction? Supposedly.

Did my mood get reflected in the dream? It's possible. I sold a Patternflow as an artwork, and the money landed in my account at ten at night. It felt great. Right up until then I'd been anxious that something would go wrong midway and the money would end up somewhere else, or that the deposit would be delayed, but seeing it arrive in my account as an actual number was a relief. So this morning I went to the post office and sent the Patternflow off to San Francisco. Shipping plus customs came to around 200,000 won. So expensive…

Since it's the first Patternflow sold as an artwork, I signed it and made a certificate to send along. Hyunji made the certificate for me, and it came out far cooler and prettier than I'd imagined, which was great. I hadn't thought to shape it like a Patternflow. Fantastic! I'm using this for every certificate I make from now on.

The Patternflow I sent gets exhibited right away in October. As a hands-on piece! I looked into it a bit, and during the exhibition period there's an event over there called SF Tech Week. It's apparently a very large event, and it's fun to think of lots of people touching and making things with Patternflow there. As an aside, when I saw "SF" I thought it meant science fiction, but it's short for San Francisco, ha.

Honestly, these past few days my mood hasn't been good. Bad, if anything. The new patterns I try don't satisfy me at all, and I said the sound side would be fun and that I'd do it and then don't, which makes me feel pathetic. I keep thinking about how to expand it, and how to share what people have made and carry that through to monetization, and it's all too hard. The advertising grant comes at the end of the month, and the mentoring needed to decide on it is running later than expected. Honestly, I still don't know what to do or how. So hard…

Even knowing the documentation or the website needs work, knowing how exhausting it'll be once I start makes me not start. And it isn't an area where I could hire someone with the grant money… in the end I have to do it. My landlord told me to move out for renovations, so I've been looking for a place, and that's very hard too. Nothing, in anything, is certain. It's a lot of stress, and if I want to live long and healthy I should probably find some way to deal with it. It'd be easier if I could live with a "it'll work out somehow" mindset.