Human geography, or Groundhog Day revisited

Looking back, this sort of turned into a dream journal. Was thinking of it again after some dreams from the other night.

The one I remember now was a variant on my recurring “vacation” dream, where I’ve been travelling somewhere and it feels like I’ve been away from home for a really long time, so much so that the vacation starts to feel like the new normal. In this dream, I was with some sort of group and had to get my stuff packed up to check out of the hotel so we could leave. Went down to the lobby to find out what the checkout time was, and somehow ended up a fair distance from the hotel, where a guy who I didn’t know told me the group had to leave by 9:00. Then he started insulting me for no reason that I could see. As I walked back to the hotel, several guys on bikes rode up to me and provided what seemed to be some kind of escort, although I couldn’t tell whether they were trying to help me or to trap me. They asked me questions, my responses to which they relayed back to someone else by walkie-talkie. One of the questions had to do with how it was I didn’t know when the checkout time was. I replied that I often have a mental map of how things are, but then I get distracted and lose contact with people, and I assume wrongly that the map won’t have changed in the meantime.

As often happens, that last comment sounds less profound now than it did to me in the dream, partly because I’ve forgotten the exact wording, and partly because ideas from dreams often sound profound in context but sound either banal or nonsensical in real life, much like ideas you come up with when you’re stoned. Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” is a good example (both with regard to dreams and being stoned) – it really wasn’t one of his better poems, and it’s probably for the best that he “forgot” most of it, if indeed that’s what happened.

So anyway, this year has had its share of things I could get bummed out about, but I think my attitude is starting to become more positive and my approach more dynamic. I’m looking for work again – had a couple of interviews for posted positions, and making a list of other places to contact. My last job was great in some ways. I loved being able to write for a living, and the nature of the task really got me to focus on how to communicate complicated facts and concepts to a wide audience using as few words as possible. And I got to learn a lot about one area of the law, doing more legal analysis than I did while working at the law firm. But it was a mistake for me to think of working remotely for an employer halfway across the country as something I could do for more than a short period of time, and I should have just kept doing it on a freelance basis while I looked for something ongoing and close to home (or at least something I would relocate for). Oh well. No point in beating myself up over past mistakes – either I can learn from them or I can’t.

On the other hand, I’ve started doing some of the things that I kept talking about without doing them. Along with a friend, I took a comedy writing course and did ticket selling and ushering for a theatre festival. And after visiting my sister and seeing the life she’s made for herself, I vowed to seek out groups of people I could be friends with. I have a few individual close friends and several more casual acquaintances, but it’s been a while since I’ve been part of a social group, and I really need that in my life. Haven’t quite yet found an activity that lends itself to that, but the goal is to find something to volunteer on that I can do for an extended period of time rather than a one-off like a festival. This is also combined with the job search to a degree, both in the sense that an office job will surround me with a group of people, and also in the sense that volunteering may provide contacts who can tell me about job opportunities, which was how I got my most recent job.

At least my life feels a bit different from the way it did the last few years, when the world and the people around me kept changing while I stayed the same. I feel like I’m starting to move / change / grow as well – maybe not totally up to speed, but in my own way and on my own terms, I’m getting closer to where I want to be.

I dream of Rudy

You know that recurring dream most people seem to have? The one where you're in a course, and it's getting close to the end of the term, and you realize you haven't read any of the materials or done any of the assignments or gone to any of the classes? And you wonder whether you might end up flunking horribly?

I'm guessing Rudy Giuliani is feeling a little bit like that right now.