There’s something wonderfully undignified about a nap. You can be a fully grown, functioning adult with responsibilities, obligations, and a perfectly reasonable schedule, and yet the moment your body decides it’s had enough, all of that gets overruled. The body calls the meeting, declares an emergency, and sends you to bed without consulting management.
Some will argue that they choose to take naps. Don’t believe them. They have no control and are simply unwilling to admit it. It’s no different for me. I am not a napper, and I fight tooth and nail to keep from going under.
It’s been a very taxing couple of weeks, though. Pair that with self-inflicted late nights and caffeine overuse and, well… yea. This boy is tired. And this morning, after rising early to mow the lawn, a nice cold shower and a cup of coffee, I went down for a nap.
Unwillingly, of course. Completely against my will. My mind and body committed a vicious mutiny against me and forced me into it.
During said forced shutdown, I had me a dream.
Or ten.
Depends on how you do the math.
Now, normally, I would consider a nap to be a fairly straightforward proposition. You lie down. You close your eyes. You disappear for twenty or thirty minutes. You wake up mildly confused, slightly dehydrated, and wondering what year it is.
But apparently, my brain had other plans.
Somewhere between the first REM cycle and whatever questionable jurisdiction governs the subconscious, the one Monkey in charge of my dreams saw his big chance and took it.
And so began The Secret Lives of Monkey Mitty.
My own personal version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty—although, in my case, I prefer to think of the Danny Kaye version, because if you’re going to spend an afternoon becoming eight entirely different people, you might as well do it with a little old-Hollywood charm.
And Monkey Mitty did not disappoint. He had apparently been waiting for this.
First, I was a food scientist. Not just any food scientist, mind you. I was working on a hamburger.
A killer hamburger. This was serious research.
The prototype consisted of four 50/50 ground bacon and beef patties stacked into what could only be described as a structural engineering problem. There was chili. There were jalapeños. There was probably enough sodium to preserve a small mammoth.
I can’t eat cheese, unfortunately, but dream-me was apparently willing to accommodate the general public. If you wanted, you could add pepper jack. Just a recommendation. This is important because even in my subconscious, I remain considerate of other people’s dietary choices.
The burger was being refined with the seriousness normally reserved for pharmaceutical research.
Texture.
Fat content.
Smash technique.
Bacon-to-beef ratio.
Chili viscosity.
Jalapeño placement.
This was not lunch. This was science. I suspect there was a Nobel committee somewhere taking notes.
Then, without any apparent transition, I became a Marine Corps Force Recon sniper. Because apparently food science wasn’t enough. And maybe somewhere deep, I like shooting shit from hundreds of yards away.
There I was—camouflaged, highly trained, deadly serious, lying somewhere in the wilderness with the patience of a stone.
Which is probably the exact opposite of the guy who had just spent several minutes calculating the optimal bacon-to-beef ratio.
But dream logic doesn’t care. Dream logic simply says: You know what would make this better? A sniper.
And so there I was.
Focused.
Disciplined.
Watching.
Waiting.
Perfectly still.
Which, honestly, is impressive considering I am the same person who can barely sit still through a movie without getting up to make coffee.
Then came the third version of me. This one was me. Sort of.
He was taller. More handsome. More athletic. He had muscles. And—this is important—great hair. Apparently even my subconscious has standards.
I don’t remember having any particular superpowers. I was simply a more polished edition of myself.
The deluxe model.
Monkey Mitty, apparently, had found the character customization menu and gone a little crazy.
Height: increased.
Athleticism: increased.
Musculature: increased.
Hair: nailed it.
It was less a dream than an extremely flattering software update. And I have to admit, I liked that guy. He seemed nice.
Then I became a food critic. My mission was simple: Find the best truly authentic Mexican food on the planet.
Not the best Mexican food in town. Not the best Mexican food in California. Not even the best Mexican food in Mexico.
The planet.
And there was one additional requirement.
It had to be as good as mine.
This is where I realized that Monkey Mitty may have a slight ego problem. But I respect the confidence.
So off I went, traveling the world in search of the perfect mole, the perfect taco, the perfect carne asada, the perfect anything.
And beneath it all was the eternal question:
“Yeah, but is it as good as mine?”
A dangerous question. The sort of question that can get a person thrown out of restaurants.
Then I was a famous documentary photographer.
This one felt different. The world slowed down. I wasn’t trying to conquer it. I was looking at it.
People.
Places.
Faces.
Small moments.
The things most people walk past without noticing.
I carried a camera and somehow knew that my job was to find the stories hiding in plain sight.
The old man sitting alone outside a café.
A kid running through a street somewhere.
A woman laughing when she thought nobody was watching.
A battered storefront.
A roadside diner.
A sunset over some town whose name I’d never heard before.
The little pieces of ordinary life that, when collected together, become something much larger.
And maybe that’s one of the things I’ve always liked about photography. You don’t have to invent everything. Sometimes you just have to notice.
Then I became a writer – A novelist.
Of course I did.
Because apparently Monkey Mitty had decided that merely photographing stories wasn’t enough. Now I was going to make them up.
I had books. Ideas. Characters. Half-finished manuscripts. Probably several notebooks filled with things that seemed brilliant at two in the morning and completely incomprehensible by breakfast.
There were stories waiting to be written. Worlds waiting to be built. People who existed nowhere except inside my head. And somehow, in this particular dream, there was enough time.
That may have been the most unrealistic part of the whole thing.
Enough time.
Time to sit somewhere quiet with a cup of coffee and write. No deadlines. No obligations. No one asking where I was. Just the strange luxury of following a thought until it became a paragraph, then a page, then maybe a book.
Then I won the lottery.
Naturally.
At this point, Monkey Mitty had earned it. But what was interesting was what I did with the money.
I didn’t buy a yacht. I didn’t build a mansion. I didn’t become some ridiculous billionaire caricature wearing a gold watch the size of a hubcap.
No.
I drank coffee.
I painted.
I visited bookstores around the world.
That was the life.
I’d wake up somewhere I’d never been before, find a little coffee shop, sit down with a cup of coffee and watch the world happen. Then I’d wander into a bookstore. Maybe buy something. Maybe not.
I’d paint when I felt like painting. Read when I felt like reading. Travel when I felt like traveling. And if I wanted to spend three hours sitting somewhere doing absolutely nothing except thinking, well…
I was rich… I could afford it.
There was something deeply nostalgic about that life. Not because it was extravagant. Bur because it was unhurried.
And then came the best one.
I invented the traveling taco stand.
Not a food truck. Too stationary.
A taco stand.
But one that moved.
Authentic carne asada.
Fried ribs.
Grilled chilies tossed with sliced onion, cucumber, some cilantro, a dash of soy sauce c garlic and lemon juice.
Salsa? Of course!
Good tortillas.
Real food.
The kind of food you make because you know how it’s supposed to taste—not because some consultant has determined what photographs well on Instagram.
And I traveled all over the country.
Tailgates.
Concerts.
Sporting events.
Fairs.
Festivals.
Parking lots.
Wherever people gathered, there I was. But never in the same place two days in a row.
That was the rule.
Because eventually, if you stay anywhere long enough, somebody wants to give you paperwork. Permits. Licenses. Meetings. Meetings about permits. Permits for meetings.
Suddenly you’re not a wandering taco man anymore.
You’re a small-business owner with a municipal relationship.
No thank you.
Monkey Mitty wasn’t having any of that.
We were moving.
Tomorrow might be Phoenix. The next day Denver. Then Chicago. Then somewhere in Texas. Then maybe some little town I’d never heard of because somebody told me there was a high-school football game there and the crowd looked hungry.
And at every stop:
Carne asada.
Fried ribs.
Tacos.
Stories.
People.
Then pack it up; hit the road. Disappear. Come back somewhere else tomorrow. And somewhere along the way, I realized that all eight lives had actually been telling me the same story.
The food scientist wanted to create. The sniper wanted to master. The improved version of me wanted to become. The food critic wanted to discover. The photographer wanted to see. The novelist wanted to imagine. The lottery winner wanted to be free. And the taco man wanted to wander.
Create.
Master.
Become.
Discover.
See.
Imagine.
Be free.
Wander.
Maybe that’s what happens when you finally give a tired brain enough room.
It starts opening doors. Not practical doors. Not What should I do on Monday? doors. The other ones. The doors that say: What if?
What if I made this?
What if I went there?
What if I became that guy?
What if I wrote the book?
What if I took the picture?
What if I traveled?
What if I just sat in a bookstore somewhere in another country and drank coffee for an entire afternoon? What if I built a taco stand and never stayed anywhere long enough for anybody to tell me what I was supposed to do?
Maybe it was an act of creation. Maybe it was overachieving curiosity. Maybe it was simply creativity finally being given enough space to stretch its legs.
Or maybe I was just really, really tired.
There is also the possibility that years of late nights, caffeine abuse, lawn mowing, responsibilities, unfinished thoughts and general Monkey Mitty nonsense finally reached a critical mass.
Whatever the explanation, I kind of like what my brain did with the opportunity.
It didn’t dream about being important. It dreamed about being interested.
It didn’t dream about having everything; it dreamed about having time.
It didn’t dream about becoming somebody else. Not really. It dreamed about exploring all the different people I might become if life gave me enough room.
And maybe that’s why I don’t want to dismiss the whole thing as just a weird nap. Because somewhere in that ridiculous little mutiny, my exhausted mind reminded me of something I suspect I already knew:
There are still a hell of a lot of things I’m curious about. There are still stories I want to tell. Pictures I want to take. Food I want to make (and eat). Places I want to see. Books I want to read. Things I want to learn. Things I want to become.
And apparently, somewhere in the back of my head, there is also a taco stand with no permanent address.
So maybe I should listen to that guy. After all, the one Monkey in charge of my dreams saw his big chance this morning… and he took it.
Maybe I should take a chance, too.
Maybe, just maybe, one of them will stick.
There’s more waiting at https://xinkblotz.com.
Telling stories, sharing thoughts, and drinking coffee. A blend of fiction, reflection, and whatever’s brewing—one post at a time.
Stories have always traveled best by word of mouth. If one of these finds a place in your heart, I’d be honored if you’d drop a like or share it with someone else.
© 2026 Mariano Velez ~ InkBlotz Press
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