I think I have a pretty normal suite of dreams — the usual “old girlfriend shows up and wants to make out,” “local property developer runs me over in his car,” “webserver load average spirals out of control” that everyone has — but it perplexes me that I tend to dream only when I travel.

This is likely due, at least in part, to the sub-par pillows one encounters on the road. There’s nothing like a bad pillow to keep you in a suspended state between reality and fiction while sleeping. And the psychological turmoil of travel — different places, different foods, the need to conduct an active social life — likely take their toll too (the brain has to work through all of that somehow).

But it’s still disconcerting.

As if a different time zone, a radically different diet, a modified coffee routine, and the absence of those I hold dear isn’t enough, I’ve got to endure a nightly playbill of Tim Banks pursuing me in a Kia Rio, “oh, that lesbian thing was just a phase,” and Apache eating up all available memory. 

It doesn’t make for a well-rested start to the day, especially a day on the road that involves the need to, well, think.