I don’t remember my dreams. Or, it’s very rare that I remember a dream. When I do remember one, what sticks with me is an image, or a feeling. People and places will be there, but it’s like everything is frozen in a moment that I am very much aware has events that happened before this frozen moment, and sometimes, I even know what will happen after. It’s all very strange.
The rarest dream that I have is the full-blown narrative, and interaction with people. That’s what happened to me last night. And it was awful.
I dreamed about people I used to work with, and not the friendly and good people who became my friends. No, I dreamt about all the awful people that I didn’t get along with, or who went out of their way to make my employment as unenjoyable as possible. In this dream, I was holding open a door to a church so people could enter. And then all of my former co-workers showed up, and refused to go through the door I was holding open. They didn’t say anything to me, just made eye contact, and then went to a different door. The overwhelming feeling I was getting was that when I went to work on Monday, I was going to get fired.
Yeah, it was a terrible dream, and what made the dream worse was when I woke up, I thought the dream was real, and I had to get up and go to that job. It took a second for me to come out of it, knowing that I didn’t have an office to report to, but that feeling of dread and anxiety has been hung all over me this morning.
Dread and anxiety is what I felt when I went into the office most days. Some of it was caused by the people I worked with, who starred in my dream. But, most of it was caused by me. Most days, as I packed myself on a subway car, listening to music and reading The Times or New Yorker on my phone – doing my best to shut out the world on my commute – I would wonder if this would be another day wasted? That if this was a job that was slowly killing me; sucking out my ambition and drive and all the reasons why I wanted to move away from home and try something different. As I get more space and time to reflect on my office days, I can see that some of the issues I had were me not being happy with the situation I placed myself in. Don’t get me wrong – the shitty people were still shitty people, but I allowed them to get to me for far too long.
But that’s the point of reflection, right? To learn lessons from your own life and actions. What I now know is that when I sense those feelings of dread and anxiety, I need to get the hell out of that situation. Odds are that I will return to an office one day, and if I do, I know the warning signs to watch out for.
That’s progress.
But I can’t figure out why I was at a church in the dream…
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