Today was a very interesting day. I had many moments where I had to check that I wasn't dreaming. Everything was just so surreal!
My morning
Early in the morning, my dad was suggesting that we go to a choir concert at 11 am in the Teresa Carreño (very famous theatre and concert room in Caracas, Venezuela). I got ready for it, made my last interactions, played some Steem Monsters, took a shower, got dressed, ran to the door and... it didn't open. No matter how many times my key turned, the lock didn't open.
I called my dad with hand signs and he backed up the car till he was at the door. I told him about this strange door rebellion and he got down from the car and started turning the key over and over and over in the door for more than 3 minutes, thinking of possible different hand movements to coerce it into opening, but it didn't. Years ago, we installed extra security so that thieves wouldn't be able to break in again. Now we couldn't easily change the lock, so my dad called his friend and they set out to take down the whole door and spent the whole day until 6 pm changing the lock.
When I returned from trying to open the door, failing, and my dad starting to call his neighbour friend to change the lock, I went straight to my computer (that's the only thing I do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) and there was no mouse! I looked and looked, turned on the table light, checked the plug at the computer and found that there was nothing where it should be. I ran to where my mum was and saw that she was using it.
"But you were going out, honey!"
"Well, I'm not anymore, mum!"
And so I got my mouse back. It was such a dreamlike morning to get stuck in such thoughts like "is the door really refusing to open?", "where could my mouse have fallen?". Things I took for granted were easily disrupted and I had no choice but to accept that it was not a dream but a funny set of scenes in the grand stage of comedy that is life.
Afternoon nap dream
After so many crazy events during the day (there were others I didn't mention, like my grandmother eating one-third of a ration that should have been for five people), I decided to go to sleep at around 5 pm.
I had one of those long and tired dreams that make me wake up many times. I thought about the dream while awake, then kept dreaming, then repeated the cycle over and over almost maddeningly. Then I woke up and after thinking about it for half an hour, I managed to get up.
The dream itself had many scenes, but I only remember a few related to a new product that was being offered by a mysterious and new company. The company offered people the possibility to sell real estate and get a 5% commission. I had understood it to be their own properties, but where would this commission come from? I have no idea.
One of the perks of selling with this company was that people would sign a deal where the contractor would have the right to ask a few questions about their experience to the buyer after two months of settling in. I wondered if this could be repeated and the contractor would be able to ask questions every two months. I imagined this questions to be intimate and the whole interview process a way to gather information.
I imagined then something like the bulk-selling of packs with a commission of Peakmonsters, which I had seen today:
I imagined a screen in my dream, clicking the + button and adding houses to sell. I wondered, would it be possible to sell 500 at once and start an information-gathering ring with these interviews that happened every two months according to the contract?
I started to imagine each house sold as a golden square in a screen. Each golden square was like a "dream plan" for people to get a house at an affordable price and with a few perks. This company and their plans were rising up in fame. I remember myself in the middle of the street, looking to the right at an old building and wondering about the meaningfulness of this event.
There was a scene in my dream where I had been a client and I got a house. I was inside, wandering about, and it was enormous. I was almost lost. The light was very dim and there were many sofas and tables all over an enormous living room.
Ponderings
About the squares
I hadn't realised how similar this dream was to my recent experience with Steem Monsters. I think that the fact that I was thinking so much recently about playing, buying and selling cards, made me dream about a variation. I don't know why it was real estate. Now that I imagine the golden boxes that were the "plans" of this real estate company, I remember the golden cards in Steem Monsters and realise that it was almost the same, except those were squares and these are rectangles:
About a mysterious benefactor
When I woke up after my "afternoon nap" (which lasted from 5 pm to 10 pm, so it might have been more of a half-sleep), I came back to check my messages and saw that most of what Gina had notified me about was card sales. This was particularly strange because I only had 14 cards in my collection, all for sale.
The second strangest thing is that these were all big sales! I sold my higher level cards! (I have a few gold cards but I didn't sell these.) I started to wonder what this was all about and saw that they are all different-splinter cards, so it was not someone building one deck but many.
I searched the name and found that this galseaknunduie has only posted once, but when I googled him, I found that he's also on Medium. He likes to post about literature in an interesting style of writing. He definitely wanted to monetise his writing, but on Google, most of the results from his name (out of 9 results) are from Steem Monster card sales.
In fact, I found that there is a Pastebin from probably a few months ago that lists how many booster packs people have bought on Steem Monsters. It's an ordered list in descending order of backs purchased.
himself, 
and 
. There are also other well-known accounts all across the list. It makes me wonder a few things: Why buy so many packs? I imagine this was during the alpha cards season. Could it still be profitable to buy so many packs? And again, why? So much money! (each pack is $2, so must have spent more than $2200 in packs, and this is only at the time when this Pastebin was made, and here I was beating myself up for having spent 60 dollars in cards).Another thing that I wanted to mention is that I think I have recovered all of my investment in Steem Monsters! And I'm still selling a few high-level cards. I spent around $60 at first, and then, when I noticed how much money I spent, and the fact that I can't really afford it, I started selling all the combined cards. It turns out that combined cards take much longer to sell, but they're more profitable.
If a level 5 card is made with 25 level 1 cards, I sell it at the price of 30 level 1 cards (or more) to take into account the 5% fee of the selling service (both Steemmonsters and Peakmonsters take a fee), the 5% fee of the buying service (steem-plus takes a 5% fee of what I paid for them, I think) and a small percentage for return of investment and my own pleasure of selling goods at an appropriate price to account for the time I spent uselessly browsing cards, buying them and putting them up for sale again. I also have to take into account that card prices are soaring and I won't be able to buy them again at the original price, so selling them at a higher price is the only thing that makes sense.
About the drawing of an angel
Every time you reload this webpage, the code pulls a random background image from a list. There is a green dragon, a water dragon, a golden dragon, a hydra, a pink archer, a beautiful angel and a few more pictures. If you want to see them all, all you have to do is use this format:
https://monsters.steempeak.com/static/images/covers/4.jpg
There are 9 pictures. The 9th is the prettiest (omg so cute). Just change that 4 for a number between 1 and 9.
The one I saw before going to sleep was a very beautiful picture of an angel. It's the 2nd one on the list. I looked at it and I stopped to think for almost 15 minutes about a storyline I wrote a few months ago for Steem Monsters. There were 15 pages of it, and I was most passionate about the part about the angels. I don't know what the final story they chose was (definitely not mine), and I may read it later, but right now all I wanted to do was immerse myself in the world I wrote about. This picture was a nice catalyst for this inspiration.
In my version of the world, angels were majestic for others who didn't know what they had to go through (and maybe even if they knew they'd see them as majestic creatures). And it would have been a mystery for everyone to know that angels came from the lowliest of beings in existence. Only those strong in mind that could not be reformed but were considered to be imperfections would have to go through a years-long ritual that would end with them drinking the elixir of life. They slowly lost their minds until the elixir of life gave place to someone new in their place, someone whose life was solely based on contemplation, adoration and the thought of fulfilling their mission. Degenerates turned into the most powerful and adored religious fanatics.
I will probably write a whole different post about these angels because it's a very long topic. I just don't know how it would fit because it's not canon anymore. I'd just be talking about my version of the world, one that wasn't picked in the end. What should we call it? An alternate universe? What could have been but never was? Just Sharon's musings?