over the last few nights i have been playing through the rock band solo drum campaign on hard difficulty. hard is really hard and i'm starting to fail out of songs. my psyche doesn't deal well with failure. consequently, i'm playing it in my sleep. i close my eyes and see the music scrolling past, impossibly fast. i can't ever seem to keep up with all the notes. my dreams are tortured with the sounds of failure. a sense of dread follows me around my waking moments. the *click* of missed notes haunting me.

in my dreams i keep trying to turn off the machine, to get some rest. but i keep ending up with "just one more". i've failed out of a song and i must try it just one more time to try to get through. even when i put down the drumsticks, the music keeps going. i wake up sweating, panicked, needing to go back to the game to play until i get it right.

i am slowly getting better at the game, which brings me some solace, and abates the nightmares somewhat. but the harder the songs get, the worse the nightmares, until i am able to get past them.