I had a ridiculous dream last night. I was with a couple family members and we signed up to go on stage and play instruments in front of an audience. I can’t play an instrument if my life depended on it. Can’t read music, don’t know any notes. And I think it was a clarinet or a flute I was supposed to play. Such a stupid dream, to volunteer for something I’m incapable of doing.

A bad dream for sure, very stressful. But that wasn’t the problem, after all, it’s just a dream. The problem was that I woke up several times after the original dream, between 2:30 and 4:30am and each time I woke up I felt the stress of having to perform in front of a live audience not having a clue what I was doing. I’d realize it was a dream, be relieved it wasn’t real… then go right back into the stress of it all over again until I woke up again.

I finally woke up at a couple minutes to 5am, almost 20 minutes before my alarm and realized that I might as well get up rather than jumping into the dream again.

Does anybody else do this? And if you do, what strategy do you use to escape the dream? I ask because this pattern of re-entering a dream I didn’t like is one that I seem to repeat again and again, and it really doesn’t lead to a good night’s sleep.

I’m open to suggestions.