Monday, September 26, 2005

The Nightmare Before...My New Job??

I have always been a big dreamer. I'm not referring to gazing across mountains and wanting a better life kind of dreams ("the hills are alive blah blah blah", "I want adventure in the great wide yadda yadda yadda"), but I mean actual sleeping and having dreams. Almost every night the strangest short films flicker across my synapses, but lately they have been majorly. Fucked. Up.

So it all started about 6 months ago. About a year ago I went out with Andrew and the boyz to see Dawn of the Dead. Now, I love horror movies. I get creeped out in the theatre and maybe for a while at home, but there is no long lasting trauma. Except for that time I saw "IT" when I was like 10, but moving on. Then 6 months AFTER seeing the DotD I have a nightmare about zombies. Running from zombies. Hiding from zombies. Kicking zombie ass. And eventually getting eaten to death. Gross and scary. But we are talking serious nightmare, the kind I haven't had since I was 10 (see above re: IT). I awoke at 5:00 in the a.m. in a cold sweat and couldn't fall back asleep. And then next night I was I was still wigged. And the next night. And I haven't seen a zombie movie since. Except for two weeks ago when Jay and Josh talked me into Resident Evil 2 which wasn't really about zombies anyway.

So I figured it was just an anomaly. But then two nights ago I had ANOTHER nightmare. This one was about a shark. I don't swim in anything I can't see the bottom of, but I have no fear of sharks. UNTIL NOW. So in the dream, I'm rowing a canoe in a canoe caravan. Except we are rowing the canoes underwater (hey, it's a dream ok?) and all of a sudden the dude in the canoe ahead of me vanishes. Through the murky water, I see the shape of a HUGE shark. A shark that would eat Jaws for breakfast (are sharks cannibals?). So then I go apeshit and turn the canoe around and hit the surface. I turn around and look behind me and this other dude is swimming as fast as he can to get to the surface and the shark is coming up behind him and oh my god swim faster dude because this shark is going to eat your ass and then...the shark bites him from behind, drags him down into the depths, and the force of the jaws is so strong the dude's limbs and his FACE...fly...off. This was a graphic dream people. So in the dream I start screaming and screaming and then I wake up. And I am scared to go back to sleep because the shark might get me. In my bed. Where there is no water.

Now, why these nightmares? I think these are classic anxiety dreams. When paired with the dream I had a few weeks ago where I left for my new job but went the wrong way and could not find the Metro station, I think it's pretty clear what's going on. The zombie dream was right in the middle of looking for a job, and the shark and the driving dream are when I am on the verge of actually starting my job. But when I am awake I don't feel that much anxiety about it. I mean, yeah, I'm nervous. But it's right by the place I worked last summer and it's not like I wasn't in school for 3 years preparing to be a lawyer. So maybe my subconscious is a lot more freaked than my conscious.

So it would seem I am really nervous about my new job even though I didn't know it. Why can't my anxiety take the form of really sexy dreams? Stupid subconscious.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I Love Ya, Tomorrow

Do you ever feel like everything important in life is going to happen in the near future? Like your planner is full of entries, but all starting next week. That's how I feel right now. Everything I am looking forward to is sometime in the future. My "real" job at Veteran's Affairs, Serenity opening (shut it, you knew I was a geek when you signed on to read this thing), going back to WM for homecoming in a few weeks, the holidays, seeing Spamalot again...it's all happening sometime other than NOW.

In fact, I often feel like nothing is happening right NOW. We're supposed to live in the now, but how can I do that when it's so damn boring? I sit at my desk and wait for the clock to hit 4:30 and then I go home and sit on my butt. It occurs to me I need some more hobbies. Or more friends. Or just better friends (seriously, did all your phones stop working or something?). I need to stop cramming life into the weekends, that just makes the "week" part of the week all the more depressing.

So, is there a new leaf to turn over in my future? Again with the future thing. I guess if I want to switch things around I should do it now. But then there's this laziness to combat. I just don't want to expend any effort. But y'all can relate to that, right?

A wise man once said (or maybe it was Greenday) "Wake me up...when September ends."