The things that I’ve dreamt about before are no longer relevant, no longer show up in my dreams—all the myriad places and happenings and locations portrayed in shimmering detail, my brain building tiny simulations geographic and geometric in its quest to find out their real significance to me.

I miss it all. I miss it all, and it makes me sick to have a dearth of newness such as this in my life. I yearn for it again, more now than ever as the years strike me faster and faster and it feels like I’ve been longer and longer without.

Things have to get worse before they get better, and I stare out into my future anticipating loss; anticipating loss, and expecting fear and conflict. Reason tells me that these feelings won’t be as bad as the regret I live with now—the regret that appreciates interest every single day, growing each time the sun sets on another day unfulfilled.

And I know that one day soon the sun will shine on me and the trumpets will sound and things will all hold promise and show fulfillment again—and I know that it will take work to get back there, all the way back there—but for now it’s something to dream about, for my brain to sort out on its own as best it can. For now I’ll let my bleary eyes close, fighting back tears and a flood of anguished emotion, and I will drift off into surreal dreams where I’ll configure something, anything, just a little bit better.