So, for the last day, I’ve been working on my blog design.  For some strange and unknown reason, the sidebar had randomly shifted downward – despite me not having changed anything.

Now, I use WordPress, and pride myself at having skills and understanding of the CMS.  My old manager from my last day job taught me much of what he knew about WordPress; the rest I learned through reading and experimenting, and creating new WordPress themes.  I had Dre set up a subdomain on the server where the site is hosted, and WordPress was installed onto it, giving me a place to practice and play with what I saw as a fun, fascinating toy.

So, you can imagine the frustration I’ve dealt with for the past 24 hours.  After all, what should be an elementary problem – a two-column layout, something I’ve been doing for ages – didn’t seem to want to solve itself with the solutions I presented, it got a tad….  frustrating.  To the point that I had to take several breaks, take a deep breath, etcetera, because I was scaring the cats and the conure in my frustration.

Well, I decided around midnight to go ahead and try to get a good night’s sleep.  I generally don’t like to take breaks like that – especially on a live site – but I could see that being frustrated beyond belief wasn’t going to help  me solve the issue.

In the night, I dreamed about the problem – it was so heavy upon my mind, I actually dreamed about working on it!  When I rose, I had to take one of the cats to the vet (unfortunately, he was having heart issues….  and passed away around 11 AM).   When I returned, I of course had this on my mind, but decided to get to work (I’ve always been the type who just works through the hard times – I find it’s easier to deal with difficult times by working on issues).

I won’t get into what the problem was (it’s rather embarrassing – but here is the joyous twitter I posted as a result), but not but fifteen minutes into the problem, it was solved.  Thus, I can happily conclude that a good night’s sleep is definitely the best way to solve any problem or issue.

I should have remembered this from high school.  I used to wait until just before bed to study (mind you, I was an early riser and went to bed much earlier at that time than I do now), because when problems or material is the last thing on your mind, your mind continues to mull over it unconsciously.  In addition, perhaps Freud won’t entirely agree with me, but I agree with those psychologists which state that our dreams are reflections of what is going on in our life (this is why I do not consult dream dictionaries).  Our subconscious is affected by the things around us and what is bothering us;  just take a look at your dreams some time, or get a dream interpretation.  And it’s common sense; after all, our subconscious is the part of us that has our instincts – to survive, to overcome.  If something is stressing us out, the subconcious will try work toward a plan to effectively overcome.

Thus, when working on a hard problem, and when you get frustrated beyond belief on this problem – take a break.  Don’t just do something else for a while, get out of the house or sleep.  You’ll find that it not only does wonders for your mood, but also gives you a tiny bit of inspiration.

And if you have issues on being absent minded or forget what inspirations you have throughout the day, keep a small notebook handy.  It can’t hurt.