My CS classes were 90% male, and every professor was male, too. They all genuinely enjoyed my participation, and it was the only environment where I wasn’t objectified or disrespected. Same with my coworkers (again 90% male) when I went into the FAANG workforce; the men were happy to see women excel in a previously male-only field.
The general public was a different story until recently. Women were thrilled, a disturbing number of men refused to listen to me.
I learned about lucid dreaming from an old book I found when I was 18, and I began practicing. Because flying has been my passion since I was 5, I focused on that.
At first, I would run and take long leaps, like I was in low gravity. After a few weeks, one leap would keep me about 6 feet above the ground until I wanted to drop back down. I’d remain vertical with my arms relaxed at my sides, and just lean a bit for direction. About a year after I began flying every night, I could lay down and then close my eyes while making one push off the ground with my right foot and I’d be immediately at tree line. I loved flying through my neighborhood and the city, hovering over streets, visiting the houses of my friends, sometimes popping in to see them.
My dreams were in real time, so it was late at night and they were almost always asleep. It felt like an out of body experience.
I’d learned from the book how to make recurring dream threats your friend, and I befriended the wolves that had terrified my dream life at least once a week for over ten years. It was an incredibly empowering experience.
After a few years, I was in a lost time in life, and my dream flying reflected how out of control I was. By then, every time I laid my head on my pillow, my right foot reflexively tapped and I was off. But now, I was shooting straight up faster than a rocket and zipping beyond the moon in just a few seconds. I started panicking that I’d “lose my earth tether” and never be able to find my way back. I believed that I needed to return to my body in order to wake up. So now going to sleep was a threat in my mind. It took weeks to de-condition myself to stop flying.
In retrospect, I should have taken control, but my day life had really gone off the deep end and I think this is how it manifested. I haven’t practiced lucid dreaming or flying since I was 28, but I miss that exhilaration of zooming at tree line in a place I loved.
Anyone who ate hot lunch had to eat everything on their tray, and we weren’t allowed to pass on any part of the meal because children in other countries were starving or something. Lunch ladies checked our trays before we were allowed to leave the cafeteria.
On the days when sauerkraut was served, we’d take turns being the sauerkraut smuggler, cramming that dank crap from about a dozen 8 year old kids’ trays into an empty milk carton, so we could toss it all without the lunch lady catching it. One day when I was the kraut smuggler, lunch nazi grabbed my carton and marched me back to the table. She said I had to eat every strand of the milky garbage we’d all stowed before I could leave.
I tried, but kept gagging and retching. I sat huddled with the collective slop at the table, crying for about 3 hours before my teacher found me and released me from lunch jail.