Ten Highlights From My Dream Resume: A Surrealist Game

Tattered Fugue 32 x 24" oil and pigment on canvas
© 1999 Katherine Kean

Like Doodling, writing a Dream Resume is one of the Surrealist Games. The point of the Surrealist Games is to access inspiration through the rich source of your subconscious. The idea of the dream resume is to chronicle your dream activities and accomplishments as you would in a waking life resume. I love dreams and remember lots of them so I find this a fun process to do.

Here are some highlights from my dream resume:

1. I flew, under my own power of course, to California from my home in Massachusetts to visit the Wizard of Oz - as it turns out the wizard is a psychotherapist in Beverly Hills.

2. I willed fishcakes to fall from the sky to feed the crowd at my pool party. Almost immediately after this I willed cats to appear and eat all the leftover fishcakes.

5. I worked for a long time and in many dreams for the Head Chef at a resort. It was my job to decorate all the cakes. Lots and lots of cakes. I must admit that I often strayed from my cake decorating duties to participate in other adventures.

11. I saved an amusement park car that had errantly left the track and flown off into the sky by swooping down from above and guiding it gently to safety with my hand – a la Superman.

3. I served appetizers to a group of friends at a party near the ceiling. We were all floating around up there.

818. I drove my car from the backseat. I included this because I was so good at it and seem to do it often.

32. I won an award. I don't know what the award was for, but both Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn were in the front row of the audience, smiling and applauding.

11. I climbed a clock tower to an amazing other world.

5. I graduated from an esoteric study course, I know because my transcript was signed off by the Elohim.

10. I was elected vice president to a student council in Africa. I couldn't be president because I hadn't been invloved in enough charities.


I didn't include some of the more mundane occupations I often find myself involved with in dreams.

I’d love to hear about any of your dream resume items that you'd like to share.

Related Posts:

Red and Blue

Dream Scaffolds

Inspiration or Interpretation: Why I Doodle All the Day

If there’s an open space within a letter I fill it in. I underline words, then underline again, and then make a squiggle. A radiating pattern emerges with undulating lines and then forms emerge, doorways and paths, clouds and trees appear. In a lecture or classroom, or while on the phone, if I find myself with paper and pencil or pen I start to doodle. Actually paper and pen aren’t even needed. A foggy window, a sandy beach, a pile of twigs on the ground - all are fair game. It’s automatic and that makes sense, for doodling is often thought of as a type of automatism.

Doodling is a bridge to the subconscious, laid out through symbols and patterns, or even through the quality or emphasis of the line. There is a relationship between doodling and dreaming. Both use images as a language to send messages from the subconscious to the conscious mind. The ability to listen to and understand these messages can be very helpful. Some say that like handwriting, doodles can be used for interpretation. Or, as in this process, that doodles can help resolve a problem.

A study by psychologist Jackie Andrade has found that doodling can help a person to concentrate and that it may help with memory. Time explains her findings and the mechanics of how doodling helps people pay attention in situations where they might otherwise tune out.

Automatic drawings, as well as several other techniques used by the Surrealists, were employed as a way to either inspire their work or as the making of a finished piece. The unconscious as a source of inspiration is a key element in the Surrealistic movement. These techniques continue to be explored by artists today. Aaron Landman has recently posted about his doodling exercises and their effectiveness in quieting the critical mind. Dora Ficher, writes about how doodling helps keep her focused.

I use doodles to find a feeling tone for the work I want to do. They’ll tell me if it’s going to be calm or turbulent and if needed, what direction I might look to in the landscape for reference.