My dreams are keeping me up at night

This week has been a rough one for me, and unfortunately I haven't even been able to escape into a good night's sleep. I've been sleeping just fine, but my nights have been full of very vivid and disturbing dreams. It seems as if my stress during the day finds a way to manifest itself at night.

I've always had very vivid dreams and have been pretty good at remembering them. Whatever is going on in my life is usually what makes it into my dreams - my friends and family make a lot of appearances as does work-related stuff. I usually know I am developing a serious crush when a guy I know shows up in my dreams. But some weeks the dreams just seem to come out of nowhere.

One night this week I dreamt that I argued with the owner of my company, a man with whom I speak probably just a few times a year. Most of the other details have faded, but it was an argument about a membership renewal not being paid.

The next night I dreamt about vampires, perhaps because I had watched an episode of "Vampire Diaries" right before bed. The dream incorporated some of the ideas from the show, and in it someone was trying to get me to let a snake bite me because then if a vampire bit me they would get poisoned and would leave me alone. I woke up in the middle of the night scared until I realized it wasn't real, and then I thought if I could only remember all the details it might make a good screenplay some day. And then I went back to sleep and dreamt some more about vampires.

The night after my brain incorporated characters from "Dexter" and the guest star from the last "Law and Order: SVU." I wasn't involved in this dream, but was watching it like a movie. Dexter, Astor and someone else were driving all around trying to track down Stephen Rea (who played the guest role on SVU) so that Dexter could murder the bad guy. There was even some elaborate scheme set up at Rea's hotel for Dexter to get him. I woke up again feeling on edge.

I got one night's reprieve before I dreamt about going down to the U2 concert at the Rose Bowl (which I will be doing Oct. 25) and not being able to get to the concert because we didn't have our shuttle bus tickets. The dream was full of waiting in line and struggling to get to the venue. And for some weird reason, the shuttle stop was in an amusement park, and was like an amusement park train instead of a real bus. We had yet made it to the concert when I woke up. Luckily our shuttle tickets came in the mail today, our reservations for the hotel are set and I've got the U2 tickets put away for the day of the concert.

After nights like these, I often wake up feeling almost as tired as I did when I went to bed. But, of course, the worst nights are the ones when I dream about work. There are nights when I dream about designing pages and missing deadlines. I guess the worst dreams, however, are the ones where I dream that I have already gotten up and gotten ready for work, and then wake up to find I haven't done any of that.

I'm not really sure what to do to eliminate these dreams. I could stop watching so much TV, I guess, but I think these dreams are probably coming more from a stressful few weeks at work. I can only hope that tonight when I go to bed my dreams will be normal again, or better yet, maybe I won't even remember them.