My Brain Throws Better Parties Than You
And why protecting your inner weirdness is an act of survival.
A few years back, I was with a friend at breakfast.
I started telling him about a dream I’d had the night before.
He cut me off fast: “Dreams don’t mean anything. It’s stupid to talk about them.”
Now, to be fair, I’d been a bit much the night before. We’d been drinking, I’d been extra, and I’m sure he was tired of my chaos by breakfast time. So he had reasons to be short with me.
And honestly? He’s one of my favorite people. We’ve been friends for 20 years. This isn’t about him.
But that moment stuck with me—not because of who said it, but because I’ve heard versions of it my entire life.
Different people. Different contexts. Same dismissive energy.
Someone shuts down a story about a dream. Someone rolls their eyes when you share something that moved you. Someone treats your curiosity like it’s embarrassing. Someone needs you to justify why you care about something soft or weird or unmeasurable.
And over time, I started noticing a pattern:
People who shut down the weird stuff aren’t being rational. They’re being controlling.
And once you notice that move, you start seeing it everywhere.
It’s not just about dreams. It’s about anyone who introduces tenderness, magic, or the unmeasurable into a conversation and gets immediately dismissed.
The opinion wasn’t the part that stuck. The delivery was.
Because it wasn’t really about dreams.
It was about control.
The ‘Logic Bully’ Effect
There are people who bully with logic.
They act like they’re being smart, but really they’re just being dismissive.
They hide behind “facts” because feelings make them nervous. They confuse curiosity with credibility. They think being unmoved is the same thing as being mature.
Meanwhile, some of us are out here just trying to have a human moment before breakfast.
This isn’t a debate about whether dreams “mean” anything. (They might. They might not. I honestly don’t care.)
It’s about what happens when someone treats your inner world like it needs their permission to exist.
That’s not intellectual rigor. That’s a little power move.
It’s a way of saying: “Don’t bring that part of you over here.”
A Brief Detour, Brought to You by Billionaires
I’m a retired luxury yacht chef.
I’ve spent years catering to people who think a “crisis” is running out of a very specific brand of French goat cheese for their toy poodle.
I’ve seen charter guests have absolute meltdowns because the sunset “wasn’t orange enough.” Or because their gold-leafed sea bass looked “too shiny.”
If I can keep my composure while a grown man in linen pants screams about the texture of his artisanal foam, I can tell you this:
People who shut down the weird stuff aren’t being rational.
They’re just being boring.
And in the world of human connection, boring is a safety hazard.
What I Wish I’d Known That Morning
You don’t have to over-explain your inner world to someone who’s committed to misunderstanding it.
You don’t have to justify your own experience like you’re presenting evidence in court.
You don’t need to build a PowerPoint called Why My Dream Matters for a person who has already decided it doesn’t.
You just take note.
Because not everyone deserves a front-row seat to the trailer of your mind.
Some people are simply not invited to the good parties.
They can sit outside with their clipboard, ranking sunsets and evaluating goat cheese, and calling it depth.
The Architecture of a Night Movie
For me, dreams are like little movies.
I’m usually the star. The casting is questionable. The plot holes are aggressive. But every once in a while, it’s a blockbuster.
If I could sell tickets, a few of them would have done numbers.
I don’t need my dreams to be prophetic for them to matter.
I don’t need a hidden message. I don’t need a sign from the universe. I don’t need a therapist’s interpretation.
Sometimes it’s just an experience.
My brain builds entire worlds out of old feelings and half-remembered details. It drags in people I haven’t thought about in years, puts them in a grocery store, and then we’re suddenly skydiving through the produce aisle with no explanation.
It’s unhinged. It’s creative. It’s occasionally terrifying. It’s also kind of intimate.
It’s my mind showing me what it’s carrying.
So when someone shuts that down with “that’s stupid,” it’s not a commentary on neuroscience.
It’s a little power move.
How to Protect Your Inner Weirdness
If a friend starts telling you about a dream, they aren’t pitching a Netflix documentary.
They’re letting you see what their brain cooked up when the lights were off.
They’re handing you a tiny piece of their inner world and saying, “This hit me. I don’t fully know why, but it did.”
That’s not stupid.
That’s trust.
So here’s what I’m doing differently now:
I notice who makes me feel safe to be weird.
I notice who treats curiosity like a gift instead of a liability.
I notice who doesn’t need everything to be productive, provable, or polished to let it exist.
And if someone tries to swat that out of the air?
They don’t get access to the blockbusters.
They can stay in their gray, logical world.
My brain throws better parties.
The guest list is smaller. The vibe is better.
And nobody talks through the trailer.
-R. Michael
If you've got a dream story or a weird brain moment, drop it in the comments. I promise I won't judge.