SCA has creepily crept into my silly little subconscious. Marc has given me double the number of briefs as everyone else, in the dead of night, while I sleep. They tell us, kindly, to make sure we have a good work and life balance, which I would say mostly I do have, finding time in our busy 

calendar surrounded by briefs to go for walks, go to galleries, spend time with my friends and partner, weekends are for all this and an evening if possible, all good baby that’s balance. I’m a tightrope walker. 

There’s me walking around out of school hours, free, enjoying myself, seizing the morning, not thinking about briefs, a real success story, you don’t get imposter syndrome when you’re buttering toast. We all know this to be true. 

Alas 

I spoke far far far too soon. 

As night spills into the room and consciousness slips out the window SCA has begun to get into bed with me, spooning me oh so close. 

I’ve had recurring dreams of SCA, of Marc telling us off, of getting briefs that are just straight-up weird, and of having stressed conversations with fellow classmates. 

I had a dream last week that Nina gave me, it was to design a new bow tie mine was red and spun and I wore it around Brixton. People hated it, I respect that. 

I had another brief given to me to sell cars to cats, that came after the Porsche one, that one I can kind of get. I came to the line pur without the fur, people hated it, I respect that. I had a brief with Ben – we had to create an experiential which was some kind of party house or rave, we went to try and see the product in action, Ben decided I was coming out with terrible ideas, I remember him kicking me amongst the neon lights. I respect that. The strangest brief I got under the (lack of) stars in London was to link all classmates with the right kind of cheese type they would be, Laura you were a manchego, Ed a cheddar, Terry a mature cheddar, Clarissa you were brie, Ben was a babybel (I’m sorry this was sleep me), Duncan you were a camembert and that makes sense. Liz, you were parmesan and I think that Holly was a mozzarella (fair). That’s all I can remember but this was very stressful and it took me all day (night) but Marc told me that it wasn’t gouda enough. 

I wake up from these dreams startled, confused, puffy-eyed and filled with a sense of creative dread. I don’t get the feeling that they are in fact useful or productive, what to do though, you can’t really speak to your subconscious. SCA shouldn’t be setting up another container in my apartment. 

Maybe my attempts at work-life balance are not yet strong enough, mindfulness maybe takes a bit of a back seat when I see many briefs piling on top of each other weekly, I doubt that this applies to just me. When I think about what I do to switch off I realize that it is mainly going out and recovering from that and if not that then time on a screen looking at a bunch of arbitrary stuff. 

So – to get away from this sleep paralysis of advertising goblins I will attempt to switch off by reading in the evening and actually switching off tech more than I have been. It may also be time to start some mindfulness exercises learnt in the first term that have subtly fallen to the wayside. 

I would like to stop dreaming about advertising, SCA’s subliminal messaging is working too well on me.