Dreams as Blueprints: What Do Our Sleeping Selves Design?

By Marie. August 28, 2025

Dreams as Blueprints

In April 2017, I dreamed of a comic book and a missing Toyota Corolla. One was a blueprint for community, the other a map of loss. Thompson ran ahead, and I followed—not knowing if I was chasing memory or invention.

What Do Our Sleeping Selves Design?

Even while sleeping, it seems I am always my traveling wandering self.

Out of curiosity, a friend asked me to share some passages in my journal. I obliged. This is an entry in my personal journal, though today, I find silly:

"I dreamed that I was proposing to someone to publish a comic book. I was telling him that it could be a short story, no color comic strip. I was suggesting it could be priced at 10 or 20 a piece, make it more affordable…In the dream, I thought the comic book could be expanded further to become a base for merchandising, for example. Readers contribute content (user-generated), etc.

When I woke up, I processed the dream and thought, the comic book should be a series…to promote it, competitions can be launched – coloring contest…. The dream was very clear about character image, design, look but I can’t reproduce it here.

I also dreamed about driving the Toyota Corolla car I used to own to a convenience store in some secluded, hilly place. I brought Thompson along with me. When I got out of the car, I let him loose. After buying the stuff I need, I went out of the store to realize I couldn’t remember where I parked the car. I tried pressing my car key but no car in the parking lot “responded”…some people helped me find it … we, I went up and around the area but there was no sign of the Toyota corolla …. At this point, my mind wandered on what happened to Thompson….I saw a dog that looks like him but it wasn’t him … the dog has black rings marked on its feet so it can’t be Thompson … then I realized that perhaps the car was carnapped?"

Thompson was the name of one our dogs who we lost a month before. I happened to be in Iloilo City then.

Lift PH Up, Inc. is a non-stock, non-profit corporation which my friends and I recently had set up. It's primary purpose is to uplift underserved communities—including marginalized and indigenous groups—by addressing systemic poverty, advancing literacy, combating hunger, and fostering sustainable development. Through education, equitable access to resources, and community-led initiatives, the organization seeks to create enduring, transformative change and inclusive opportunities for all.

My Friend's Interpretation

What Do Our Sleeping Selves Design?

This personal journal entry is anything but silly—it’s layered, vivid, and quietly revealing. It holds the texture of your dreaming mind: entrepreneurial, imaginative, and emotionally attuned. Even in sleep, you were designing systems of care and creativity. And the second dream? It’s haunting in its symbolism—loss, disorientation, the search for something familiar that’s suddenly out of reach.

Here’s what I see in it, if you’re open to reflection:

🌙 Dream as Map: A Gentle Reading

The Comic Book Proposal

This part of the dream feels like a subconscious rehearsal of authorship and accessibility. You were already imagining:

  • A low-cost, high-imagination medium.
  • A community-driven model (user-generated content).
  • A playful outreach strategy (coloring contests, merchandising).

It’s not just a comic—it’s a prototype for participatory storytelling. That impulse echoes your current work with Lift PH Up, Inc., your workshops, and even your blog series. You’ve always been designing spaces where people contribute, color in, and co-create.

The Toyota Corolla and Thompson. This second dream carries emotional weight:
  • The forgotten car might symbolize a lost sense of direction or control.
  • Thompson’s disappearance evokes vulnerability, memory, and the ache of misrecognition.
  • The secluded, hilly place could be Iloilo itself—familiar yet shifting.

It’s a dream of searching, of trusting strangers, of trying to locate what was once yours. And the detail of the dog with black rings on its feet? That’s such a precise image—it feels like your mind marking the boundary between what’s real and what’s almost.

Interesting, isn't it? Want to try? If you're open to reflection, share your dreams and I'll ask my friend how he'd interpret it.

NOTE: Visuals in this story were designed using Canva’s AI image-generation tools to evoke scenes from memory and imagination.