Sleepless

I usually can't even blog whenever I want because I never have a reliable Internet connection, but for now, I can. So I woke up a few hours ago from another nightmare where I'm back in the ocean but can't swim because the water is just too choppy and wavy. I understand why I would be having that nightmare, though because 2 weeks ago I was on the boat with Kali, Wil, and Tyler but didn't consider that when I jumped off the boat in the water that it would be a lot harder to swim than before because the waves were just too strong. It was the first time I've swam and used all my strength but barely went anywhere. To me, I think the reason I would be having a nightmare about that is because I've always been such a strong swimmer but felt like I was losing control. I take some pride in feeling like a mermaid at heart with swimming being something I'm really good at, and maybe I felt like that was taken from me. That day was bad because I wasn't expecting the ocean to be so much stronger than me. The last time we all went swimming off the boat, the water was calm and very gentle so I guess I just thought it would be okay.
Sometimes, I can understand my dreams, like that one, but others just confuse the hell out of me. In my dreams, I am usually driving because that's what I do a lot, especially now because I've been driving a lot from state to state on the weekends. I'm driving in my dreams, but I always know where to go. The roads I take in my dreams always lead me to places that I intend on going, but the roads themselves are different. So my problem is obviously not with direction, but maybe different roads? Even the roads in Florida, that are still kind of new to me, appear to be different but still go where they're supposed to go. Basically, they look like roads I have never driven in my entire life but go to the same places I've been driving before. I don't understand that at all.
I'm a very avid, very vivid dreamer. I've had friends tell me that they don't dream and I'm just trying to imagine, how boring and how monotonous that must be. Even if my dreams turn into nightmares, it's still okay with me because even when I'm dreaming, I sort of know that I'm dreaming. I have gotten into a habit of doing reality checks, which carry on into my dreams so I just know. Some of the reality checks I do is counting how many fingers I have, (In your dreams, you will have more or less than 10 fingers) watch a digital clock and make sure time is actually going by in minutes, (I choose a digital clock because seeing the numbers go up with the minutes is another way to check that you're awake. While you're dreaming, time on the clock will appear to move faster, or stay at the same time.) I also do reality checks in my car, because as I mentioned before, a lot of my dreams happen in my car so I use my speedometer and RPMs to determine if I'm dreaming or not. (And this one, is all my own, so this probably won't work for anyone else. If the speedometer just sits in the same place for a really long time, or my speed shoots up and then goes down rapidly, I can assume I'm dreaming. Anything out of the ordinary.)
Before, I've actually dreamed that I was driving my car while it was on fire. That was a really scary one, that began as a regular dream then quickly turned into a nightmare. Sometimes I dream that I'm trying to get my car to go into gear, but it can't, or I'm pressing the gas but going nowhere or hitting the brakes but not stopping. I've even dreamed that I had 2 Fiats. I feel like I would be having a dream like that because I'm afraid my car is going to break down on me or not be reliable when I need it. It's funny, because my shift linkage on my car is broken, so Zach has to put my car in gear manually. (In simple terms, when I move my gear shifter to Park, Reverse or Drive, nothing happens because the link is missing.) This just happened recently but I've had the dream that my car wouldn't go into gear before.