To Sleep Perchance Not To Dream

In the NaBloPoMo blgging challenge, we are given an optional prompt every day. This month's theme is energy, and today's prompt is:

If you could be given the option to never sleep and also never be tired, would you take it if it meant you'd also never dream again?

While I would love to have extra hours in the day, I would miss dreaming tremendously.  Despite the occasional nightmare, I find dreams can range from entertaining to enlightening.  I've also had some very deep, realistic dreams that, with some more writing skill than I have, might have had the potential of being turned into stories or books.

I remember dreams from my childhood, especially the dreams where I lived in a place where it was light at midnight.  Or it was constantly dark, with strange constellations that somehow scared me.

I've had dreams, some in childhood, some in adulthood, where I feel so powerful.  And others where others could fly without technology, but I never could.  As an author, I could explore those themes, too.

I've traveled to other countries in my dreams, while in reality I've never left the North American continent.

I don't think I would want to give this all up, just to have some extra hours added to my busy days.

I have a feeling I'm not the only one who has thought about life without sleep.

The theme of people who do not need sleep is explored in depth in a four book set by the native New York State science fiction writer Nancy Kress.  Years ago, when I subscribed to the science fiction monthly Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, I read the novella that led to the Sleepless series.

Thanks to genetic engineering, babies who did not need sleep were - can I use the term created?  The original novella explored what happened next.  These children grew up well adjusted, with high IQ's and with a special ability no one had expected.  But, in the meantime, society had to adjust to the presence of, as these adults were called, Sleepless.  To put it mildly, the adjustment was traumatic.

I've only read the original novella, and hope to catch up with the rest of the series when I am less busy.  Or maybe when I have more time because I no longer need to sleep.

Have you turned your dreams into stories?  Would you thrive, or wither, without your dreams?