[ dreamlog ] my brain is apparently busy or something

[kiya]

I have a friend I am Concerned about from a community context in which dreams are sometimes treated as significant, and I have no idea whether my occasional dreams involving that person are Dreams Of Significance or just random nerve firings. I have had a previous dream about S (in which he was in need of comfort and emotional support and I provided a shoulder to cry on, basically, details are lost) and I checked in with him afterwards in reality to make sure he was okay.

This dream I am losing rapidly but it had a lot of moving parts. It was set in something which may be a part of The City (the location of some particular dreamscape spaces which is recurring in my consciousness) or may be some not-The City recurring urban environment. (Basically it is definitely a The City but I am not sure if it is the same The City as the 'main' one.)

For reasons that are at this point entirely obscure to me I spent the first chunk of the dream purchasing a combination gas station / minor auto shop / convenience store from some people who had more details, which I have now lost. Much of the dream after this point was sort of like a computer management sim game of trying to get sufficient employees, sufficient parts, and so on. The gas station part ran without supervision (hooray computers I guess) and the garage bit mostly needed parts management somehow (there was a sideplot, also lost) but there was a lot of trying to figure out when S (the friend of concern) would be available to man the convenience store part. There was another specific person who was handling the mornings (details lost), so I could say that I would do it whenever S had to leave in the evenings, because S lives some two hours away and there was a brief moment of brain being baffled about why he was willing to work in my shop given that, but he was very insistent and okay, sure.

In additional recalled plots there was the problem of integrating a new business into a community that was familiar with the old owners, without having the local social ties, and all the neurospicy-related anxiety about meeting people and getting on with them. (Which possibly has to do with my brain processing about the possible local artists' collective, now I think of it, if it's anything.) There was one notable incident of a local having a conversation with me in which I was moderately at a loss about their personal context and they claimed to have had an entire previous interaction with me that I knew nothing about in memory, which was a bit stressful, but definitely a "pretend I know what's going on" social interaction.

Also, at one point I closed the shop down for ten minutes (due to lack of staff) and went to the local McDonald's to try to get food, as that was the only food source that wasn't convenience store within easy research (this computer game management sim does not appear to have internal internet, which now I think of it may be evidence that it is The City after all) only to discover that there was a queue up the alley leading to its raised patio space to the side of its building, and eventually staff came out of the building to explain that the whole place had been rented out for a party but if we wanted to give simple orders they would do their best. After two people ordered single things I decided that my order of three things was probably not simple and went off in search of other food, which I do not remember how I solved.

I suspect the LARP shop sim aspect derives a fair amount from playing a lot of Tavern Master earlier this week while I was sidelined with a hideous migraine. I get weather-linked migraines now and I am profoundly aggravated that after all that buildup what we got all day was "dreary drizzle", not any weather that felt meaningful, significant, and worthy of cancelling my music lesson over due to being intolerant of light, sound, and also feeling unsafe driving.