About Me — Jennifer Dunne

A mystical agent of reality change. And math nerd.

Photo of author, by author.

The hardest part of writing an introduction is not what to say, it’s what to leave out.

In order to create a compelling narrative, there must be a through-line, a direction in which one travels, facing adversity and achieving against all odds. Yet life is rarely like that. It’s messy, chaotic, and random; filled with things that seemed like good ideas at the time.

So here’s a through-line, talking about what brought me to start posting on Medium. A look behind the curtain.

Drowning and lucid dreaming

When I was young — about 8 — we went to visit our cousins who lived on Long Island. They took us to the beach, where their son was going to show my brother and me how to body surf. The waves were too high to body surf safely. I went into the water anyway, and got knocked down and caught in the undertow.

I was lying on my back, pressed into the sand, with maybe an inch of water above my face. I could clearly see the sunlight, and more importantly air, on the other side of the water. But the shifting sand gave me nothing to push against. The undertow was too strong. It pressed me down with more force than I could counter to break through to the air.