I’m tired so this might be incoherent. But it’s genuinely felt like “dreams” themselves aren’t limited to being asleep. Daydreams are one thing, but even then, dreams themselves are kind of like symbolic processing of events/memories. So if we’re processing everything around us all the time, wouldn’t that mean we’re dreaming all the time? I can go inward almost like a meditative state at times and see how I processed some memory or event, and it feels like it as perspective jumps, non-linearity, details that are omitted/changed, etc. I’m feeling it now because I kept thinking I had a memory of someone always hugging one of my pillows whenever they were over, except this is the exact thing I do when I’m at one specific friend’s place. So, either the memory itself was encoded in reverse (which I doubt since I clearly can recall and correct it), or the replay/processing itself took place with different “rules.” I feel like this bit explains a lot of deja vu’s I’ve had if it’s like taking a 360 snapshot of a memory and twisting/playing with the perspective like a rubix cube.
I feel like the encoding itself was normal, but the processing/replay is always what’s changing. That could’ve been the behavior of a dream character that just got pulled from the real life memory, but then that signifies that the memory is getting processed again in a different way. Regardless, I know these real time processing dreams happen and I sometimes even engage with them. It’s almost like I get a bit of amnesia after though, similar to a real dream. And it feels a bit counterproductive to write down or note when it happens, since that itself would affect how that processing happens.