Accomplish a Dream One at a Time

Last night I went to the dream interpreter and it was very interesting to hear her speak about dreams. I typed up a page paper about my dream I had and read it to her in front of everybody. She told me I had sleep paralysis because I had altered my sleeping pattern with lack of sleep, which was true. She explained to me when I am in that state of mind, its equivalent to the the mind of Einstein. She told me the next time I have a dream like that, to "play around" with the dream and ask questions to the "ghost-like" figure I saw. She told me I could do anything in my dream and it will feel like reality. Other than that, I was not the only person with crazy dreams, other people in attendance had dreams about their teeth falling out or swimming with fishes. I did learn a lot from her and now I am more interested in dreaming. Besides that, my race is on Sunday and I feel like I am ready for it. All my other friends are doing the 15k, but I like to go above and beyond to test my limitations. Hopefully my friends will come support my race, since it is on the following day after the 15k race.

Dream interpreter

Tonight, Sigma Lambda Gamma National Sorority Incorporated, my sister sorority, is having an event tonight at UT with a famous dream interpreter. I am excited because of the dream I spoke about in an earlier blog about having sleep paralysis. I want to know the reason behind my dream and why it happened. They say she can interpret my dream, so I am excited to ask her a lot of questions. As far as that, I have a half marathon to run this Sunday and I hope I can finish the race. More details of the dream interpreter will follow the next blog.

Back to Life

FINALLLLY!!! Back from the ROTC Field Training. It was a great experience because so many schools from all over Florida INCLUDING Puerto Rico was there to train with our battalion. The weather was cold at night, but at least it did not rain like last year. I met some cool people in my squad that helped me improve on my leadership skills. The only thing I hated was the night land navigation training. We had to do find grid points on a map at night time and it was very frustrating because I can only see three feet in front of me in the woods. The next day we had nine, two hour missions back-to-back and that was very tiring. The last training was day land navigation and I had to find 8 points over a 5000 meter area. Overall, I performed excellent in my training and I am ready to get my evaluation in the summer before I become an Officer. The next goal to accomplish is my half marathon this coming up Sunday. I have some intense training this week to prepare for my big race. Let's do it!!!!!

Playing Soldier

I've been so busy this week, mainly because I am preparing to leave tomorrow for ROTC Field Training Exercises at Camp Blanding until Sunday. I am so nervous because they are evaluating me on what I have learned throughout my 3 years in ROTC to prepare me for the real evaluation this summer in Ft. Lewis, Washington. The evaluation at summer will determine my branch in the Army and my ranking in the nation as a cadet. This weekend I have to do land navigation and squad missions for 3 days straight. The only thing that sucks about going is that we have to sleep outside in the woods and we can not take showers. I can imagine that it will be very cold and I will be mentally drained from the weekend. Tonight, I am going to take my mind off things and hang out with my fraternity brothers and just have fun. When I get back, I am going to take a long shower and eat junk food. Playing soldier gets difficult at times, but it is what I have to do.

Rest of the Weekend

After Victor's one year death, the Tampa life started to cheer me up again. On Thursday after all my classes were complete, I celebrated my friend's birthday and ended up having a lot of fun. After that I wondered what I was going to do for Valentine's day. I have not had a Valentine's date since I was a senior in high school. I did not count on having one, but things seemed to go the other direction. I asked a girl I hung out with recently to be my Valentine and she said "Yes, I would love to." It sounded like a cheesy romance scene. To sum up the date, I took her out for Japanese Hibachi and went to watch Wolfman. Nothing serious or cheap because she was not my girlfriend, just a "potential". She is not getting the full package at this moment. The end of the night, I thought about being cheesy so I asked her if she wanted a kiss. She looked at me weird, then I pulled out a Hershey kiss. She smiled, then I kissed her. To myself: GET IT ISAAC! ;)

Day of Mourning

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the death of my fraternity brother Victor Strizzi, who died in a motorcyle accident. I did not know what to expect, but I felt a little out of my norm. I felt like the year went by so fast because it seemed like he was alive yesterday. I woke up for ROTC PT training and we had a moment of silence with the ROTC Batallion before we did our daily workout because he was also an ROTC cadet. I began to feel emotional throughout the day because the tragic memory kept on coming back to me. I only had one class and was occupied the whole time, so class did not affect my studies. Around 7 o'clock my fraternity brothers set up a visual at the intersection of Bay to Bay Blvd and Bayshore Blvd where he passed away. We all attended and gave flowers and paid our respects. I felt very emotional and broke down in tears. I know then I joined the right brotherhood because my brothers were there to comfort me. After the visual, we all went to Mr. Dunderbak, which is a German restaurant Vic loved to go to and we all enjoyed a nice jagerschnitzel. After that, we all went to Wendy's and ordered frosties because that was his favorite dessert. Overall the one year anniversary was emotional, but I got through it with the help of my brothers. Life must go on with my head up high.

reflecting

This weekend had to be the longest days of 2010. I had four birthdays to attend on Saturday and a long day of trash talking on Superbowl day. Birthdays are fun, it is always a good time when you are spending it with close friends. Life seems to be maturing because most of my friends are turning over 21. I remember the days when we were not old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes. Soon we will be old enough to get a degree and live the real life. In the distant future, my whole generation of peers will have kids and families they make of their own. Life is so much unexpected, for all the people you meet or encounter throughout your life, all the good and bad times you have, and the many hours and days you breathe. I am expecting a lot in life with goals to accomplish, places to see, and people to meet. I am living life by going with the flow and I will keep on living until my life is ended. Hopefully that will be long enough to the point that I can accomplish all my goals. I know for a fact that I am on the right path and will keep on going that direction for a long time. Only time will tell the answers and I have to keep it plain and simple.

craziest night experience

After a long day of classes, a physical workout for ROTC, and a 6 mile run at night, I arrived in bed at midnight. I was so happy to sleep because my body was so tired. After a couple hours of sleep, my mind woke up but my body was still asleep. Crazy things were happening to me in my sleep. I first felt like my body was being pulled down my bed. I felt there was a demonic presence in my room and this frighetened me the most. I paniced and try to get out of bed, but my body was frozen and could not move. I tried to scream for help, but I could not speak, it felt like I lost my voice. After ten minutes, my body finally woke up and I was able to move. My body was still tired, so I closed my eyes for a minute and then my body went back into paralysis. These occurences happened repeatedly throughout the night until my alarm clock rang at 5:30am. It was the most frighening experience in my life.

I looked up the symptoms and charcteristics on Google and found out I had sleep paralysis. I then looked up sleep paralysis on wikipedia.com and it said under the symptoms and characteristics section that it "occurs when the brain awakes from a REM state, but the body paralysis persists. This leaves the person fully conscious, but unable to move. The paralysis can last from several seconds to several minutes after which the individual may experience panic symptoms and the realization that the distorted perceptions were false." It also says that you can suffer horrible hallucinations and having a sense of danger.

I felt very frightened from the hallucinations I experienced, a figure hoovering over me looked like a dark shadow. I heard voices saying "they were coming to me." This is what caused me to panic and made me want to get out of bed. I did some more research online and it showed many blogs of normal people experiencing the same symptoms. I felt like I was in the middle of my dream and in reality at the same time. My whole "dream" occured in my room. Wikipedia.com said that "Several studies have concluded that many or most people will experience sleep paralysis at least once or twice in their lives." I am very interested in this and wonder if it will happen to me again, but hope it doesn't.