This is your brain on tired.

I was thinking about dreams earlier. Not my hopes and aspirations but the little stories that play out in my head when I'm asleep. I close my eyes every night to end my predictable mundane day and enter an exotic world where the laws of man, God, and even physics don’t apply.

If I’m lucky I sleep. I have nights of insomnia which might explain my fascination with dreams. Dreaming is proof of sleep, right?

Sometimes I keep a notebook and pen by my bed so that I can write down my dreams as soon as I wake up. Consciousness pushes many dreams out of my memory. Maybe dreams weren't meant to be remembered.

I read somewhere* that during R.E.M. newly acquired information is filed and stored in the memory. I guess new facts and data whirl around like bits of confetti until we sleep and dream. That’s when the bits get defragmented and sorted allowing for more efficient retrieval. McMemory.

So while our brains are busy filing and doing very important serious work that’s for our own good we repay that feat by reducing it all to a nonsensical story.

It’s kinda funny how even when we are asleep we get bored. The tedious task of storing and filing data causes our unconscious minds to wander. To zone out. Dream.

*Every time I hear myself say "I read somewhere" what follows reminds me of Tim-the-tool-man-Taylor as he tried to relate Wilson's fence side chats...