The Night My Brain Exploded

(ALERT: NSFW language)

Here's a story:

My mom passed away on May 14, and we held her funeral on Tuesday, May 20. That night, I went to bed around 12:30. That's early for me - I wanted to be well rested for the drive back on Wednesday.

I don't know when Janet came to bed; that didn't rouse me. But when she came back to bed after getting up to use the bathroom, I woke up.

I did not wake up drowsy and tired. I did not wake up merely refreshed. I woke up surging with energy, feeling as if I were ready to explode, because of the dream I had just had. I said something to Janet about wondering whether I should tell her about the dream, but I needed to go to the bathroom.

Dreams fade quickly; by the time I wrote about the dream in my journal, some details had faded. But it went something like this:

I was, it seemed, a new employee in the marketing department of a large company. And somehow I was chairing a meeting of honchos. And I left the meeting and ran into someone from the design department - bumped into him so that he dropped his stuff - and as I was helping him pick it up, either I saw this phrase on one of his papers, or he spoke it: "Change the fucking world."

And it penetrated like a bullet, and set me on fire.

And I went back to my meeting, which was running late, or running long, or both, and instead of feeling scared because of that or apologizing for that, I went in with total swagger because it didn't matter that the meeting was late or long or both, what mattered was that we were going to change the fucking world. And I said so.

And I saw "change the fucking world" becoming a global mantra, with me as chief guru for the attendant movement. I saw myself, like Anthony Robbins (Has he stopped being "Tony"?), onstage in an auditorium filled with thousands - no, tens of thousands - pouring out verbal fire to help them change themselves so that they could change the fucking world.

I saw T-shirts emblazoned with a four-color logo: CTF*W. I saw bumper stickers with the same. Coffee mugs.

I saw myself re-ordering my personal relationships, putting family, friends and acquaintances on notice: "I want people around me who want to change the fucking world. If you don't want to change the fucking world, that's okay - but I gotta ask, 'Why not?'"

And there was was music - a throbbing anthem for full orchestra, led by brass.

And I woke up ready to change the fucking world, NOW.

On my way to the bathroom, I glanced at the wall clock in the kitchen and thought it said 6-something, and concluded that I may as well stay up, because there was no way that I could fall back asleep. I'd do better to start getting ready to leave - I felt like I could drive a thousand miles.

The music was filling my brain, along with the images of T-shirts and bumper stickers and me onstage before tens of thousands ("Now get outta here, and CHANGE THE FUCKING WORLD!" Crowd roar: "YEAAAHHHH!!!"). And, and...

I was linking "Change the fucking world" to the call of Christ and the identity of the Christian:

For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to devote ourselves to the good deeds for which God has designed us.     (Ephesians 2) 

"We're created in Christ Jesus to change the fucking world," I said.

And all of this is happening on a trip to the bathroom, and I want to ACT, so I pick up my phone to check the availability of the website address, changethefuckingworld.com, and I see that...

...it's 3:26 a.m.

WHAT???

I was totally jazzed emotionally, I was almost exploding with physical energy, and my mind was focused like a laser and racing like a lightcycle...

...on three hours of sleep????

I immediately wanted to know, "What brought about this phenomenal state, and how can I get it again?"

My best guess, then and now, is that my state was fueled by having drank multiple glasses of punch at the funeral meal, followed by two cans of Pepsi later. Both my body and brain may have been sent into overdrive by sugar and caffeine.

That answer's a bit disappointing, as I don't want to make massive doses of sugar and caffeine parts of my regular diet. But the question of how to place myself at will into a state of high energy, high confidence and high clarity remains intriguing, to say the least.

It's also possible that my state was fueled in part by a heightened awareness of mortality. I was already working at maintaining an awareness of mortality, so to the extent that that may have been a factor, re-experiencing the state would just be a matter of getting better at that.

For now, I am finding that the very act of recalling the event elicits at least an echo. I do, in fact, want to change the fucking world (tm).

No. Not "want to."

Intend to.

A day of seeds

So, today was not a day of big actions. Today was a day of small actions on things that could become big.

Meetings, mostly.

A meeting with a young woman with Americorps who is working at Westinghouse H.S. over the summer and who wanted help in thinking about setting up a WHS Facebook page. That was fun because she's smart and energetic and cute and has a kind of huggable openness (no, I didn't hug her).

From what she said, I think WHS admins are way off in their approach to using Facebook: they want to not allow kids to comment, and to be able to update it about once a week. I think that such a page will lose kids' interest almost instantly. And I said so.

Then I met with James Brown and Phillip Thompson of the Lighthouse Project, the afterschool program at Westinghouse, and we laid out a basic framework for students to work over the summer on producing a series of "I Am Homewood" videos. That's pretty exciting.

Then I had a phone meeting with Andrew Hughes, president of Designing Digitally, about creating an MMORPG based on Homewood. That was pretty exciting too, for a couple of reasons: first, because online games have the potential for generating revenue at least three ways - upon initial purchase, via subscriptions, and through the sale of in-game accessories. Second, because it still sounds like something Mani Saint-Victor said earlier is still true - namely, that a prototype could be produced in time for at least a soft launch at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, a little over a month from now (Aug 3-7). Third, because online games commonly have multiple iterations and fourth, relatedly, because the Homewood game could grow through iterations to become progressively richer and deeper. Fifth, because if it takes off, it could make me enough money to live on (say, $3,000/month), or even enough money to buy investments that produce enough money to live on (say, $250,000). Finally, it could help a bunch of people learn to think differently - holy cow, this could be the path to my fantasy of coaching a community toward success - build in insights from Tony Robbins, Paul Zane Pilzer, Scripture, and everything else I'm convinced of.

(How do I learn how to run a computer game company?)

Anyway, that was fun...and this evening Janet and I met with Gene and Dee, for a relaxing and uplifting conversation in Highland Park while the girls played in a playground. That was nice.

There's much more happening. I must prepare to have my life simply explode.