I rarely have trouble falling asleep, but the other night I found myself caught in this disturbing loop where I’d drift off, plummet instantly into a nightmare, and wake up with a racing heart and a film of sweat on my face.

I’ve read a fair amount about lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming occurs when you become aware that you’re dreaming, and you suddenly have a loose grip on their contents. Want to fly? Open a window and soar into the atmosphere. It gives you a level of control people assume isn’t possible.

I used lucid dreaming as a kid to wake myself up from bad dreams, but more recently I’ve been trying to develop my ability to recognize my dreaming state and see what else I might do.

The few times I’ve attained lucidity as an adult, I tested my state by making myself float. Inevitably, the moment my feet lifted off the floor, I got too excited and woke up. Rather than continue launching myself into nightmares the other night, I thought I might be in a good place to do some experimenting. I’ve been thinking a lot about the novel I’m working on, so I considered how lucid dreaming might influence my understanding of the world I’m building.

I envisioned my characters as I fell back to sleep, and the coolest thing happened. For a split second, I stood in a sun-dappled forest with two of my characters. I wanted so badly to ask them questions. What are their desires, hopes, fears? It was a chance to have a face-to-face conversation with my subconscious. Like floating, though, I woke up the moment I realized I was dreaming.

Meeting my characters, brief as the encounter was, felt like meeting myself from the future. I knew my characters, but there were experiences they’d had that I couldn’t possibly know. Things I haven’t yet dreamed onto the page. That element of mystery was both thrilling and terrifying. I’m not sure how to interpret that moment, but I’m going to continue experimenting. I hope to meet them again soon and see what they say.

I can’t get more than a few pages through Steve Pressfield’s The War of Art before I want to come here and write about it. Too much of it just resonates. Here’s today’s takeaway: finish what you start.

Consider how many times you’ve started a project only to set it aside thinking very cleverly, I’ll get to that someday, and it’ll be awesome. There isn’t much that stacks up to the pure, unbridled joy of starting something new. It’s nothing but ecstasy in those first few manic hours when you unleash your creativity and pour out your idea thinking of nothing but the potential of your idea’s nascent existence.

Eventually, your steam runs out, and you put the work aside to catch some sleep or finish the show you’ve been dying to watch. You come back to it and look at it, turning it over in your palms to look at the speckles and glitter in its lumpy form. Goddamn, I’ve got something great here, you think.

Then you wait. You need to be in the right head space. You need to wait for creativity to surge back up from the depths.

Then you need to get your oil changed. You’ve had a long week at work, and you deserve a break.

The irony of the situation escapes you. The worship you do at the base of your creation’s potential turns you into Gollum. You get so lost in the beauty of its potential that you forget you’re in a musty cave growing pale in the dark.

You can’t judge a work’s ability to succeed until you have it in a form you can take out of the cave and show others, and that means getting shit done.

I’ll leave you with another gem from Mr. Pressfield:

The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got.

Don’t be afraid to slam back.