EPISODE · Mar 21, 2026 · 11 MIN
Dreamscape Diaries: Nighttime Noises
from Victor's Oddyssey · host Victor's Oddyssey
March 21st, 9:31 in the morning.I woke up after quite a pleasant sleep.I haven’t checked my sleep score yet, but I think it might be one of the best sleeps in this cycle. Let me see—I’ll check it now in real time. You’ll get the verdict.Waiting for your sleep data… updating… analyzing…Okay, it wasn’t too good.I scored 77. I slept a total of 7 hours and 22 minutes, with at least over an hour of REM and deep sleep respectively. But I was in bed for nine hours, so not a very high sleep efficiency at 82%.My sleep debt, which the Oura app has started estimating over the last few months as an added functionality, accumulated to four and a half hours.If I look at the graph showing different sleep phases, I had maybe four or five awakenings.A Stressed SystemI’ve had an issue with my resting heart rate being very high recently. Tonight it was up at 55. I’ve been as high as 59 in recent days.My HRV is down at 50 milliseconds, which is low. I’ve been above 100 on average before, so yeah—my body is stressed.That also shows in the accumulated readiness scoring, which is very low for me now. And my resilience is down at the lower end of adequate.It’s probably even bordering on limited, which is a level I’ve never been at before.So… scary stuff.The DreamBut I did have a dream tonight that I want to relay.So, another entry into the Dreamscape Diaries.As I remember it, it was late in the evening. I was lying in the top bunk of a bunk bed in some apartment.The people in the apartment were my dad, my brother, maybe my sister. I don’t remember if my mom was there. It felt like some version of my childhood home.It was late. I had already eaten dinner earlier that evening.But for some reason, someone arrived at the apartment and delivered hamburgers to some of the people there. So they were eating a full meal—hamburgers and fries—late in the evening.And I was thinking to myself: why are they eating so late? It’s going to impact their sleep.Then there was something I needed to do, so I climbed down the ladder from the bunk bed and went into a kitchen area.I had a brief conversation with my dad, and something happened to him—he was confused, or maybe even fell to the floor. I don’t remember exactly.But that situation stabilized. Nothing continued there.Nighttime CommotionAfter that, I started hearing loud noises coming from the kitchen wall.At the same time, there was building dust coming out of the wall, and I could see the blade of a saw pushing through.And I realized: they had planned to renovate their kitchen in the middle of the night. They were tearing down the whole wall.And I was supposed to sleep there overnight.But obviously, because they had just started this renovation late in the evening, they were going to continue throughout the night.I got really upset.As I walked back toward the bunk bed to grab my things and leave, I was shouting at my dad—asking why they were so stupid as to plan a kitchen renovation in the middle of the night.And then I woke up.Morning LightSo, a very confusing dream—as most dreams are.I’m not reading too much into it.But it’s fun to document them, because at least for me, if I don’t do it straight away, I forget them completely.So there you are.What else has happened?It’s sunny today. The sky is completely blue.There’s a super faint cloud smeared out so thin it barely looks like a cloud anymore. And there’s one airplane trail stretched into a wider band.The sun is shining, and the wind is very still.I’m sitting here on our balcony in Vasastan, Stockholm, just enjoying the pre-spring sun.Very enjoyable.Reading and CreatingIn front of me I have the book I’m currently reading—LSD: Mein Sorgenkind by Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of the LSD molecule.I’m currently at page 182 out of 230, so about 75–80% through.I’m reading it in the original German, so I’m struggling with some words. But like any challenge, if you take it step by step, it goes your way—especially if you find that balance between novelty and familiarity.On that topic, yesterday morning before going to the gym, I was inspired to start drafting a new rap song.The beat I wrote the lyrics to was generated by an AI—Suno.ai—which you have to tame a bit with prompts and specificity. I think I’m starting to get a handle on how to shape it to my liking.You can generate an instrumental in about 5–10 seconds once you’ve written a prompt and hit “create.”That’s very cool.I won’t play it here because I don’t know how Spotify or Apple Podcasts handle music, so I’ll just read it out as a poem.The actual song will be much more up-tempo—a drill-type beat.Draft LyricsAnother verse.Let me lift this curse.Give birth.Let out monstrous creations to quench this thirst.F**k propriety.Push my stake in the ground in this hunt for satiety.F**k sobriety.We all censor ourselves in a straitjacket hell of what we call society.Civilization,building mental prisons,physical nations,choking human relations,paths littered with fear and frustration.Scorch the turf in the purge of our innermost core,like we’ve lifted the crust of the earth.Forced to surf on the lava, we sink even more,drill a hole in our spiritual purse.Ruined souls,ruminating the fact that we lost our control.All are scared, none are bold.Now we’re all molten in the same mold.Ain’t this s**t getting old?Aren’t you lot getting bored?Time to step to the granite,just pull out that sword.Time to step to the plate,put your palms in the fire,fingers glowing with flames,now you’re plucking Life’s Lyre.Yeah, that’s how far I’ve come with it.That’s only a bit less than a minute into the instrumental, and the full track is around four minutes long.So, unless I add a chorus—either myself or maybe with a friend—there’s still a lot of space to fill.Similar to another song I’ve been working on that I haven’t made public yet, this will take a few iterations.It’s about finding the balance between different rhythms and speeds in the lyrics, but also shaping a coherent trajectory in the content over a longer runtime.So wish me luck on that.I wish you luck on your creative endeavors.And I’ll speak to you soon.Be mindful of your life energy.Namaste, fam. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victorsalander.substack.com
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Dreamscape Diaries: Nighttime Noises
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