How coffee shops are like computer games

When I was much younger, I used to play a computer game called Age of Wonders. It's a turn-based strategy game that I very much enjoyed, even to the point of playing it several different times in order to follow different paths and find out what the different outcomes would be. (I would not be adverse to playing it again, in fact.) For probably a full year, it was the only computer game I played. I realized one day that I was spending too much time in the land of elves and orcs and goblins, because I dreamed of the game during the night. In my sleep, I played and beat the difficult level that I had been struggling on. Usually, when something starts to show up in your dreams, you know it's time to cut back.

Thumbs up if you can name the characters

Unluckily for me, I dream of the coffee shop, and I have been dreaming of it for a while. Said dreams are not usually bad; I'm not completely lost in a sea of coffee or being torn apart by angry customers or anything horrible like that. No, the night fantasies only include me working, which, since I do enough of that during the day, makes me not a huge fan of these dreams.

Last week, though, I was lying in bed trying to sleep, but I couldn't. I generally have a lot of trouble sleeping for various reasons, and other light sleepers will sympathize. Often when I share a room with someone, I sleep with earplugs to cut down on noises that might disturb me, and this night I was visiting my best friend. Because she's an early riser, I knew I would need all the help I could get to sleep well.

However, I dreamed that I couldn't sleep because I needed my earplugs to sleep. However, every time I got them settled in my ears, I was forced to take them out again, because I had to answer the ding of the coffee shop drive through. Frustrated almost to tears, I did not know what to do, because I needed to sleep, but I knew that the customers coming through the drive through needed to be helped, and I was the person tasked with manning the drive through. I don't remember if I actually took my earplugs out or if that also was part of the dream, but eventually I ended up sleeping.

When I woke the next morning, though, I was confronted with a horrible truth. I have been working too much. Oh dear.