where to go?

right. i have reached a dead end on trying to decide which direction to go and it's only been a week into officially launching the 3rd year project!

thing is, there are so many things that i'm fascinated about.. but i just don't know where to start. it's hard for me to keep order of what i want to do and how i want to progress since i'm a person who needs a very structured, logical path in order to do things. so diving in head first is not my style. it really isn't!

so i've decided to just write.. and keep writing.. write about what i've found so far, what my intentions are, what possibilities lie ahead of me. and hopefully things will all string together and come together in one piece as opposed to many different random things as it is now.

so, first.. dreams. i find it really interesting whether dreams are a reflection of reality, or an escape of reality. scientists believe that we dream in order to secure and revive our memory, kind of like putting a seal on top of our day to contain the events that have occurred so we can use this information later on in our lives. but pyschoanalysts believe that dreams are a reflection of our subconscious.. what isn't actually there. what isn't actually touchable, tangible.. a reality we wish to fulfill.

some scientists also believe that we dream in order to process emotions, like "resetting the north of our emotional compass". this is what ties in tune with what the psychoanalysts say of dreams reflecting your true emotions.

in a BBC documentary, Prof. Robert Stickgold mentions that "the nightmares what we dream prepare us in our waking life. Rehearsing stressful events help us deal with the events ahead. Without nightmares or bad dreams.. humanity may not exist"

is it possible to design for something that's actually non-existent? Designing to capture these emotions you release during the process of dreaming?

something else i'm interested in, which also relates to the whole idea of reality or not is the idea of subjective realities. mainly the idea of fantasy and why we're so captivated by it. take fiction and film such as twilight, lord of the rings, harry potter. or simply fairytales of cinderella, snow white or the little mermaid. as a child, it's understandable that we are fascinated by these make-believe worlds of fantasy. but even as adults, these stories continue to fascinate us. they're just the same, except that they deal with much more complex issues. but they are still make-believe.

so do we become engrossed in fantasy worlds in order to escape our own realities?
if so, what benefits are there?
what are the reasons in us doing this?
does this in some way reflect society in that we don't want to face the truths of what's become of us today?
are there any ways of designing for this?
do these tinted realities tie in with our way of dreaming to escape reality?

why are people obsessed with a reality that's not our own?

even something like Disneyland, Warner Bro's, Movie World theme parks. a place for children? no, not really... for grown adults too. but why? why do we enjoy escaping into these make-believe worlds

is it possible to design something that provokes or reflect these needs of escaping reality?