On Dreams and Plane Crashes

Last night, I dreamt that I was in a plane crash*. As the plane was crashing, we were very close to the airport (National, I think) and I told myself, “Ok, we’re going down into the water right by the airport, you have a very good chance of surviving.”** And I did survive. The plane just sort of floated in the water and it seemed like everyone was ok. Once I realized that I was going to survive, I thought to myself that this whole experience
would be a really good blog post***. Then the dream went off into a completely different direction that involved Christmas presents.

When I was in the shower this morning, I had this vague thought that I had something really interesting to post about today. Then the dream came back to me and I realized that I hadn’t actually been in a plane crash and my great post evaporated. So here I am posting about how I can’t seem to separate my sleeping from my waking thoughts.

*I have plane crash dreams a lot, although I’m not especially afraid of flying. I used to have dreams about planes crashing into buildings all the time, but they stopped after 9/11.
**On rough landings or take-offs, I always reassure myself by thinking that I have a decent chance of surviving since we wouldn’t be crashing from that high or in a really bad place, like say midway over the Atlantic in winter. I don’t have any scientific basis to back up this assumption, but it makes me feel better.
***Surely an odd thing to pop into my head shortly after I’ve survived a plane crash?