I normally tweet my dreams, but this one turned out to be too intriguing to condense into 140 characters.

I dreamt I was nominated for a Hugo Award, and had entered an area by the side of the stage where a cocktail party was being held for the nominees. Once inside, I mingled with friends until I came upon one of my old Marvel bosses, the long-dead Archie Goodwin. While chatting with him, and wondering in what category the comic book writer/editor had been nominated, I was strangely unsurprised to see him there alive (in the waking world, he died in 1998), looking much as he had when I’d last known him in the early ’80s.

While wandering the room and continuing to schmooze, I suddenly noticed that I wasn’t wearing the suit I usually would for such an event—I was instead In a tie-dyed t-shirt and a pair of jeans shorts.

What I found so interesting about the dream is this—here is where it could all have veered into anxiety dream territory, with me stumbling about, crying “Oh, no,” and wondering how the heck I could get back to my hotel room and change into a suit in time. I could have felt embarrassed over my state, or started to worry about how silly I’d look if I won that night and had to take the stage dressed that way.

Instead, I immediately found it funny.

I told a seated George R.R. Martin that this oversight might be a good omen, that I’d lost the Hugo all four times I’d previously been nominated and showed up wearing a suit, and so perhaps this time, dressed like that, the universe was playing a joke on me and would have me win so I’d have to go up in front of thousands of people that way. That turned the whole dream around, banishing any anxiety that might have arisen, and I found it all hilarious, instantly thinking of how much fun I could have laying it out that way in my acceptance speech.

And as I went around the room sharing this silliness with friends, I woke happy, not just because of that dreamworld realization, but also because of the real-world realization that I’d turned what could have been an anxiety dream inside out. I was glad that, even unconscious, I could look on the bright side of life.

No idea what category I was nominated in, though.