The sun set hours ago. I may have spent the evening working or relaxing or designing the perfect geopolitical solution to achieve world peace. I’ve brushed my face, washed my teeth, and pulled on my Christmas pajamas. Yes, I realize it’s not Christmas. However, I’ve heard that when we look back on our lives, we regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do do, so dang it, I’m going to wear my Christmas PJs whenever I feel like it.

After I climb into bed and flush my brain of the day’s thoughts I look ahead eagerly to the next few hours of entertainment: dreams.

I wonder what they’ll be about tonight. Anything cool or fun or useful? Hopefully it won’t be my brain dragging my anxieties into the show. I get enough of that during the day.

I try to count down to curtain time. One hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight. Nine . . . ty . . . what was that thing again . . . a meeting . . . I need to talk to . . . ninety-seven . . . maybe pizza . . . no, how about a . . . ninety-eight . . . where was I . . .

And then everything goes to black. Whether this takes a few minutes or a few hours, I don’t know, because my brain compresses it all into a single “blackout event.”

But then they begin. All sorts of cool things. And fun things. And useful things! All of which I would go into amazing detail right now but for one small problem.

I wake up.

For a few seconds, the last part of the most recent dream feels vivid. I think, “Okay, that one was different. I’ll totally remember it. But then, like a match, it flares up and is gone in a tiny puff of smoke. There was that one part where . . . no. I think I remember something cool. Maybe . . .

I mean, I must be dreaming. I have memories of everything about the dreams, but not the actual content. Seems kind of unfair. I’m pretty sure I’m doing my best work in there.