I don’t usually try to interpret my dreams.  It’s not that I don’t believe in dream psychology – I actually find it pretty interesting – or that I don’t remember my dreams.  I often have vivid, strange dreams, but they either convey an obvious mood or are filled with the type of strangeness that’s based on the pieces of my life being tumbled around and jumbled up in my brain.  So, typically I wake up after a dream, replay it in my mind, maybe entertain whichever friends played a role by telling them about it, and then forget it.

But there was something about my dream last night that felt like there was more to it.  A man, a very ordinary looking stranger, came to my house and let loose a spider.  A giant tarantula-like spider.  I hate spiders…but I didn’t run away.  I didn’t want this thing climbing into some nook only to jump out and surprise me later.  So I started trying to kill it.  I was trying to drop the thickest, heaviest books I could find on it, even stepping on the books after they landed, but this thing kept going.  Then I grabbed a book and dropped it and noticed that the creature underneath the book was pictured on the cover.  The exact same one – the guy (who was just standing around, neither helping me nor the spider) had written a book about his spider.  (I have no idea what sort of book it was…memoir?)  Then he made some comment about how quickly he had self-published his work.  At that point, I was just as mad that he had exploited self-publishing by doing it so carelessly as I was that the damn spider wouldn’t die.

According to one dream interpretation website, spiders symbolize irrational childhood fears that need to be overcome.  This didn’t quite fit for me.  Neither did interpreting spiders as tricksters, or signs of balance. Since both spiders and dream symbology are complex, there are a lot of theories out there to choose from.  Many of them deal with spider webs, but no matter how interesting and seemingly relevant those may seem, there was no web in my dream.

This one was interesting (from Dream2Live): “If you dream about a black widow spider…your dream may be telling you that you are experiencing a major change or transformation in your life.”  The reason I had said the spider was “tarantula-like” was that it changed, as people and things often do in the course of a dream.  It was always large and disgusting, but before it was the hairier version, I noticed a marking on it that I thought to my dreamself looked like a giant black widow.

There weren’t many references to killing a spider, except for this on the Dream2Live site, in the section about spiders and fate: “Alternatively, a spider may refer to a powerful force protecting you against your self-destructive behavior. If you kill a spider, it symbolizes misfortune and general bad luck.”  Seems important that I was trying to kill the spider with books.  One of the things many sites agreed upon was spiders as a sign of creativity (apparently writers tend to have spider totems).  I am back to work on revising my novel and it’s going well at this point, but it’s not a simple task.  It’s much easier to give in to frustrastion at how hard it is to get published.  Maybe the spider that wouldn’t die is the part of me that’s a writer who can’t quit writing?  (The part that I’ve been known to tell myself, at times of deep creative angst, that I could snuff out and do something less stressful with my time?)

I’m not sure of the significance of that self-published book (the dream dictionaries don’t seem to cover that one) and why my anger redirected from the spider to the book.  Self-publishing in itself is not a “self-destructive behavior,” especially since the structure of mainstream publishing provides real challenges for many worthy books.  But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it, and maybe giving up on your work just because revising is a difficult, time-consuming, uncertain task to self-publish work that’s not your best, just to see it in print, is destructive to your creative self.  Self-publishing under those terms feels like cheating yourself, other self-published writers who did their homework, and readers who might have enjoyed your work at its full potential.  That’s a pretty close match to how I felt in the dream.  Maybe in the end, it was a “Don’t Give up!” message.

The other thing about spiders and fate – and I really want to believe this one – is that I clearly couldn’t control fate with all my unsuccessful murder attempts, but maybe by not killing the spider, I was escaping misfortune and bad luck.  When Juno has her tumor removed next week and it’s sent out for a biopsy, I can only hope that my worst fears don’t pan out and we get to escape misfortune like that creature in my dream that was determined to live forever.

(and now that’s more thought than I can handle giving to spiders…starting to creep myself out…why couldn’t it have been bunnies or squirrels?)

In the late 17th century, famed pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with the dust of 100 dogs, dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body—with her memories intact. Now she’s a contemporary American teenager, and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica.

When I was a kid, I had a serious pirate obsession.  And it’s not really much of a secret that dogs have always had huge role in my life.  I’ve been excited about this book since I first heard about it!  My copy will show up at my door in its happy Amazon box any day now.  It’s received excellent reviews, so I highly recommend you pick up your copy today (you can go the busy-impatient-person online route like me or, better yet, buy from your local indie bookstore…those little guys are having a hard time these days).

A.S. King, the author (and a dog lover) also keeps up a great blog.  Today, in her “Wagging on Wednesday” weekly canine feature, my pack was interviewed:

http://dogfact9.blogspot.com/2009/02/wagging-on-wednesday_11.html

…ending a marriage through Facebook?

 This is the perfect example of common sense being sacrificed to technology. Not that this sounded like the ideal relationship with Mr. Right to start with, but still.  Repeat after me:

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Like all those people who blog insider information and/or insults about co-workers and/or psychotic rants and then lose their jobs.  I recently read about someone who twittered insulting remarks about clients he was on his way to see. Needless to say, Twitter traveled faster than he did, so the meeting wasn’t as friendly as he’d expected.

To me, it’s not a question of technology being impersonal. I like keeping up with my friends via Facebook/Twitter/Email/Texts. Since we’re all busy and far-flung, I find it much more personal to drop a line electronically than to not communicate at all for months. I don’t even have a problem with really personal conversations happening electronically. I’d rather learn news – good or bad – with a text or message that I can get immediately than wait weeks or months to get stale information face-to-face.

But here’s the thing…After so many years, it still seems to elude people that much of the internet is public. Rather than have conversations behind the closed doors of email or direct messages, people post to blogs (and microblogs, including status updates) things that they would never normally announce to the world. 

Would you take out an ad in the newspaper announcing your divorce? Especially before you’ve really discussed it and settled it with your spouse? Would you change your voicemail to “You’ve reached Jane Doe. I’m leaving my husband. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you before I ever call him again?”

I don’t know, maybe this guy would’ve taken one of those routes a decade or two ago…In that case, all I can do is file stories like this under Inspiration for Future Novel Character Development.