Dreaming in PHP and MySQL

Every morning for the past few weeks, I wake up realizing I am perfecting code that I can no longer remember, as it dissolves with my dream. For the past week and a half those dreams have involved ERD modeling, SQL statements, and most recently PHP. Every day I think the task at hand is unconquerable and by the end, I find myself cheering (trying to do it quietly--we all do it occasionally) when the seemingly insolvable problem has come to a simple resolution and the figure I have been trying to get onto the screen appears.
Today, all the pieces we have been learning began to connect, as I started learning how to access databases in PHP. (For those who don't know, PHP is a back end scripting language, meant to bridge the gap between what you see on the screen and the data that is stored by the server.) However, I soon paused the video as I decided to slow down and try to digest my other lessons first.
I have to remember to slow down a lot as I find myself getting competitive with other students. As a friend reminded me, this can be good motivation, but it can also make me race through assignments faster than I should. Luckily, I am learning about myself that I am not good at not doing my best on my work. I always double back and force myself to get the answer, even when I think I've moved on.
Also, we had our "belt exam" last Friday. I was literally certain that I had failed. I managed to miss part of the directions, so after four hours of obsessing over my HTML and css I spoke to other students who started mentioning using jQuery (a Javascript library for animating the screen), and I freaked out. With less than twenty minutes to go I added what I could and then went over time cleaning it up. I then spent fifteen minutes explaining to a friend of mine how I felt like a failure and shutting out everyone around me.
Today, I got the results...9.5, or "near perfect." All right, I admit it. Sometimes I might catastrophize.
Also, last week, when we worked on jQuery, I made a Digital Therapist page. It was a pretty horrible therapist (pretty much just repeated back what you put in, and not even all that well), but a lot of fun to create. (I enjoy being a bad therapist occasionally after spending so much energy trying to be a good one). I'm still not much closer to knowing how I can use these skills to improve the world (unless this amazing job helping non-profits ends up working out, but I'm trying to maintain healthy pessimism in case it doesn't), but it's fun to bring some of myself into the work.
Speaking of dreaming, it's about time to do some of that.