Leaving reality, escaping to Dream Land: The story of my sleep

I am usually a news watcher. As a kid, my ideal job was a newspaper reporter. Early on in life I had a thirst for chasing stories.

When I became a teenager and discovered CNN, I was intrigued by the idea of watching a story play out live. There was an excitement about it. The idea of being there and narrating as something unfolds was appealing to me. I’d be doing something different every day. You never know what would happen when you went into work that day.

Fast forward 20 years and the news landscape has changed. Scratch that: The world has changed.

As much as we hear the term “news cycle” and how stories come and go so quickly, it seems as if scandals stick around longer than anything. And much more time is devoted to covering, discussing, debating and arguing about them.

I flashback to endless coverage of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. That was literally days upon days of non-stop stories, panel discussions, screaming matches and name calling. Ditto for Stormy Daniels and any other political scandal that has happened under President Trump.

Lately, I find myself turning away from the news. Many people have said they don’t watch it because it’s too depressing. For me, I’ve done something different. I’ve gone to dream land.

Last week, after having a few long days, I went to bed at 9 p.m. Yes. I was so exhausted and in need of rest that I called it a night much earlier than I normally would. The first night that I did it, I had some good dreams.

Unfortunately, people don’t remember all of their dreams. What I did recall was that the dreams were fun and made me wake up in a good mood. Because of that, I went to bed early for a second night. And you know what? It was another night of great dreams. Know what happened next? A third night was the same. Nights 4 and 5 had me wake up looking forward to the day. Actually, they made me look forward to sleeping again.

Rather than watching hours of endless arguing and people beating a news story to death on TV, I opted to escape reality and rely on my dreams for entertainment. I could have chosen to watch a funny movie or bingewatch a classic sitcom until the wee hours to end the day on a positive note, but I left the real world to let my brain take me somewhere else.

Given today’s highly sensitive and dramatic world, the choice to shut myself out from every kind of media gave me a refreshing week of positivity and optimism. I might not be able to change what happens in the world but I appreciated taking a break from reality to gain a clear head and feel well rested.

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