Is it just me?

A question to the writers out there; is it just me or do you also have reoccurring dreams when you have been shirking from the words? OK, maybe you are all diligent and never shirk, but when I do I get The Dream. 

Historically, the scenario is that I find myself back at Uni, in my final year, and people keep telling me that my Literature lecturers are looking for me, having spotted that I haven’t set foot in the department for the whole academic year. My pigeon-hole is stuffed with notes and I haven’t handed in a single essay. At some point I regain enough consciousness to tell myself that I left Uni ages ago and that this isn’t real. But I wake up feeling guilty and I know what the real message is. I know. 

 This has been happening for over 10 years. In fact I've been having this dream since before I started writing with intent - when I wanted to write but kept letting life and excuses and fear get in the way. It took a friend to suggest that perhaps there was significance in the reoccurring nature of the dream. Once I started writing they stopped. Then I started procrastinating and they started again…


The night before last, after having been angsting about the writing for a while and producing all of approximately nothing, I found myself on a Writers panel chaired by someone who was intermittently Alexander McCall Smith and Phillip Pullman.  Obviously my performance was toe-curling even in my sleep, but it had the desired effect and I was back in front of the computer yesterday morning, attacking the task that I have been putting off for so long.

Is it just me? Are you hounded and chastised by dreams too?