job offer anxiety; my impaired condition; lost opportunity repeated

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a room with a number of other people. There was something like a formal presentation going on in the room. But the room wasn't very formal. Everybody was sitting all over the place, at all different angles, in all different kinds of chairs, some people even under blankets. The room was mostly dark, with some bright light shining from the back of the room and throwing a little bit of light on everything else. The presenter was a young woman who may have been something like everybody's boss.

At some point during the presentation I felt I'd heard everything I personally needed to hear. I grabbed some other guy and headed out of the room with him. We walked down a narrow, fire escape-like staircase that ran along the side wall of a lower room. The lower room had a couple windows letting in a lot of natural light. But this room was also in disarray: a computer and keyboard sat on some kind of crate, and there seemed to be blankets everywhere.

The guy and I discussed something that had to do with whatever kind of business I was trying to take care of. Once we had come to a conclusion, we decided to split up. I'm not sure where the guy went. He may have stayed in the lower room. I went back up to the upper room.

Not long after I got back to the upper room I got a call on my cell phone. I answered the phone, stood up, and walked out of the room. Now there were a lot of men, like business men in their forties and fifties, casually dressed in t-shirts, shorts, and sunglasses. They were all talking out business ideas with each other.

The call I had taken was some kind of job offer. The guys, who currently worked for the woman, just like I did, saw that I was talking over a job offer. I knew some of the guys were tempted to tell the woman what I was doing. One of the guys may not have wanted to say anything to the woman. But he did ask me why I was talking to someone about taking a job offer.

I was now walking down a few very narrow, steep steps, off of a cabin porch and down to a clearing before a calm forest. I held the phone to my ear and asked the man -- who was neither near me nor on the phone -- whether he could blame me. After all, I said, the woman hadn't given me work in more than five weeks. I needed a better guarantee of steady work than that. And the place giving me the job offer could give me steady work.

I was now walking, or taking some kind of track-bound, cart-like vehicle, down a long stairway or slope that ran underneath a huge, suspended passenger airliner. The top of the airliner, I knew, was completely sawed off. The seating area was completely visible. Both the airliner and the slope I was moving down were apparently hanging high up in the air, maybe even over the clouds.

It was now like the cart-like vehicle I was driving in was a family's vehicle, maybe even an SUV. There had been a building at the top of the slope. The building was a hospital. The family driving this family vehicle had picked up the oldest son of the family (who was, now, maybe in his late thirties or early forties) up from the hospital.

The son was practicing to be a doctor. He was Hispanic, kind of overweight, with a pudgy face and finely done, graying black hair. He wore a black button-up shirt and some nice slacks. He looked healthy, but tired and frustrated from the day. He was so tired that, even though he seemed to have some pent up aggression in him, he was carrying it around with an almost elegant sort of resignation.

The mother of the family, a very old, thin woman wearing a dress almost like a flannel nightgown, patted the man on the shoulder and told him not to worry. The mother knew things were frustrating. But they'd all turn out alright. The son had been thinking about giving everything up. The mother's speech either made the son think it would be alright, after all, to give everything up, or that it would be better to just hold on through the frustration until conditions improved.

Dream #2

I was in some place like a movie theater. The theater was gigantic and completely filled with people. But the seats were all turned, in huge, orderly blocks, at strange angles, so that only a few blocks of seats were pointed directly at the movie screen. I seemed to recognize a lot of the people in the theater. It was like this event was some event for a group of friends or professional colleagues of which I'd been a part.

Sitting just a few rows down from me and across a strangely set aisle were a few young men I'd known from a previous job. They looked very healthy, vibrant, and well-dressed. They were very beautiful. They had been kind to me in the past. But I felt like nowadays they wouldn't have the obligation to be kind to me. They might just treat me rudely, or at least without consideration. I hoped they wouldn't notice me, so I wouldn't have to start up an interaction with them which would ultimately lead to a compromise of my feelings.

But somehow I dropped my glasses and they landed all the way over at the men's feet. One of the men, who didn't look like, but reminded me of, my old co-worker CJ, picked up the glasses. He noticed that one of the arms was broken and fixed in a tacky way. I hoped he wouldn't call attention to this.

We were all now sitting at a dinner table, in a gigantic room packed full with crowded dinner tables and beautifully dressed people. Sitting just behind me at another table was an incredibly beautiful and beautifully dressed, young, blonde woman. The man holding my glasses seemed about to give the glasses back to me. I hoped he would give them back soon and not mention anything about the damaged arm in front of the beautiful woman.

But the man began gabbing away about the damaged arm and the tacky way I fixed it up. At first it seemed like he was talking about it just because he thought it was a little bit funny -- quirky, kind of like I have always been known to be. Then he thought it was interesting in a kind of involving way. Then, finally, he seemed to think it was sad, like he didn't know how I could have gotten to a point, mentally, where I thought walking around with eyeglasses like this was okay.

I didn't know how I'd gotten to this point, either. I may finally have taken the glasses back. I probably looked down at the glasses and hoped that something about my condition would at least draw the beautiful woman to me. I'd been attracted to her. Now I was sure she didn't like me. But maybe she would like me, after all, if there was something in all of my messed up character that drew sympathy out of her.

Dream #3

I was out underneath a tarp with a number of other people. I was involved in business with two older women, both of whom had something to do with the fashion industry. I had made some mistake, something having to do with losing my nerve, at some point, so that I didn't speak up about something. This basically made one of the women decide she wasn't going to do any business with me.

I knew this was bad. With the woman's business, I'd be in extremely good financial shape. Without the woman's business, I'd be nearly destitute. But I could physically feel my business opportunity with the woman snap shut, like a click at the base of my spine. I also saw the image of an object like a black, plastic makeup disc, snap shut.

There were some other people under the tarp. Most of the people were young. Maybe some of them had been rude and unkind to me, causing me to lose my nerve. I felt like I now needed to fight back against them. I probably knew it wouldn't make a difference regarding the business between me and the women. But I felt like I could at least prove that I wouldn't always lose my nerve when people were mean to me.

But I didn't really have the opportunity to fight back against the young people. Nobody was really paying attention to me anymore. Or, if they were paying attention to me, it was like people would pay attention to some dopey, harmless, but overall nice, friend of theirs.

This mood made me feel more comfortable around everybody. I had originally been standing all by myself, at the very far edge of the tarp. Now I worked my way a little bit in toward the center of the tarp. I was trying to find the older women, to see if I could patch up my relationship with them.

One of the older women was standing behind an easel that had a huge pad of presentation paper propped up  on it. I couldn't see the woman. But I knew she had been talking about some problem she was having. It was either an idea problem or a mechanical problem. But as I thought the problem over, I realized I could probably pretty easily come up with the solution.

I tried to get the woman's attention so I could tell her this. But I didn't want to step behind the easel and face her directly until I'd had the opportunity to speak with her a bit and soften the mood between us. I believe I did manage to speak a few words with her. I seemed to be getting back into the woman's good graces.

But as I was doing this, an SUV pulled up maybe about fifty or so meters from the tarp. It was my family. My mother, brother, and some other family members got out of the car. The young people under the tarp pointed out to me that my family was standing over there. They made me feel obliged to check in on my family rather than continue my conversation with the older woman.

Somehow, maybe because it had been pointed out to me by the young people, I knew that the older woman was having some kind of trouble with a tube of lip balm. I knew my brother also had some lip balm. But I was again convinced, somehow, that what I needed to do was fix my brother's lip balm, not the older woman's.

So I walked over to my family's car. My brother showed me his lip balm, which was in a black, plastic, disc-like container. His lip balm may have been fine. In fact, he may have asked me if I wanted any. I had a feeling it would be rude to refuse the offer. But I really didn't want any of his lip balm. I was hesitating, trying to decide whether to accept or refuse.

not quite hired; nephew's medical dilemma; a sculpture in new york

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at a job interview. It was supposed to be a professional place, but it looked more like the backstage area of a theater. It seemed to be full of worktables and cluttered everywhere with colored fabrics and trinkets. There was one little office where my interviewer, MH, sat. The room was buried within the clutter of the rest of the place.

MH had decided that he wouldn't be able to hire me. He seemed to be disappointed in my interview. I walked away from the office, rather disappointed in myself and depressed. But only a few seconds later (though it may have felt, in some way, like it was a day or two later), MH walked out and implied that he would like to hire me after all.

MH set up some kind of desk space for me on one of the work tables by clearing off some of the piles of colored fabrics and laying down a laptop. MH hadn't quite told me he'd like me to work for him. Instead, he told me something like he needed me to stick around for a while. He said he needed some kind of data entered into a system before some event occurred, like the visit of some clients. He was just asking me if I could do this project as a favor to him. But I understood that if I did this project well, I'd probably stick around for even longer.

A couple other guys now started filtering into the room. They looked young, like recent college graduates. One of them seemed to be dressed in business casual clothes. But at least one other guy was dressed in a strange, but somewhat fashionable way. One of these guys was very short and pale. He had slightly shaggy, black hair. He wore pale, greyish jeans and a pale, greyish, denim jacket. Something else about his attire looked very clunky an 1980s-style.

The young men, when they saw me, seemed to be jealous of me, wondering whether I wasn't here to take away their jobs. I tried to make a point, apparently through my body language, that I was here to do a completely different job, not to take anybody's job.

To prove this, at one point, I stood up right when the grey denim boy was walking past me. I may have been planning to show him something. Instead, the young man became a little frightened of me and began walking backwards as I walked forward. But somehow we began talking, and eventually we were talking either about something we both liked (like some kind of art) or about some kind of project I'd now volunteered to help the grey denim boy with.

I may have been a little worried, now, about helping the grey denim boy with a project. It seemed like he was kind of weird. I didn't know if everybody else would think I was weird for helping this boy with something. But then I realized that most everybody else here also dressed weird. So nobody would think anything about it.

The grey denim boy and I had cleared off some of the clutter of colored fabrics from a work table. There was now a whole cookie sheet of sweet-looking desserts. The desserts were like scone-sized globs of maple, pecans, and sugar, all clumped and crystallized together. There wasn't any crust or pastry or anything attached to these sugary globs.

The whole team of workers was now, apparently, gathering together to have some kind of a team meal and meeting. We gathered at a table in the center of the room. There were little spaces cleared out for each of us, so we could sit down our meals, or desserts, and our laptops. But the clutter was so high that we couldn't see around it to the other people sitting at the table with us.

The meeting never seemed to start or finish. Instead, people seemed to take forever to sit down, and then they'd stand right back up and walk away. I sat at my space, waiting for instructions or something. I thought about eating my dessert. But I felt bad about doing so. I knew that eating too much during the day would make my body act weird. I was trying to figure whether I could somehow work eating the dessert into a schedule that would be okay for my body.

Dream #2

I was in an elevator with an older man. The man was white, stood tall, wore a nice business suit, and had fine, white hair. The elevator we were in was going straight up at first. But then it began going upward and forward, diagonally, like we were traveling in an elevator car, but along the tracks of an escalator.

We were, I knew, going up to the 23rd (or 28th?) floor. I knew that my youngest nephew had just been admitted to the hospital. He was sick, possibly with a pulmonary illness. The old man and I were coming to visit my nephew. I believe that we understood, at this point, that nobody else in the family knew about my nephew's condition, including my sister and my mom, who lived with and took care of my nephew.

The doctors wanted to give my nephew some medication. But the doctors didn't know what medication to give him. They apparently couldn't get a hold of my sister or mother, so they called me. The old man and I were now standing just outside the hospital.

I got the message from the doctors via text on my phone. I didn't know how to respond to it. I thought that before I responded to anything, it would be a good idea to try and get a hold of my mother and sister. After some trying, I may have gotten a hold of my mother and sister.

In fact, my sister may now have been sitting near me, on some brick ledge surrounding a raised planting area that held some small trees and shrubs. I may have tried to make a point to my sister that I hadn't been trying to control her life or her son's life by engaging in a conversation with the doctors.

I "said" (or just "felt to" my sister) that the doctors had contacted me, and that I was surprised they'd done so. I "said" that I had only been planning to respond to the doctors because I hadn't been able to get a hold of my sister or mom. I thought that if I couldn't get a hold of anybody, I'd have to respond. The situation seemed too important. It seemed like someone needed to make a decision sooner rather than later, to make sure my nephew was taken care of.

Dream #3

I was looking at a book of sculptures by Japanese artists. The artists all had a style very much like the style for which Takashi Murakami is famous: plastic-looking, cartoon-themed, and visually bubbly and complex. But a lot of the artists didn't color their works. The works would largely be all white.

The book had photos of these sculptures in stores all over the world. Some of the stores may have been cleared out to become temporary exhibit spaces for larger collections of art works. Other stores may have carried on with their business, with just one large piece of sculpture placed in the middle of a store.

The final photo I looked at was of a store I think I recognized as The Disney Store in New York City -- even though it was nothing like The Disney Store. It looked more like a bookstore. There were bookshelves spaced widely apart. The store was kind of small. The walls were barn-red. The ceilings were high. In the center of this store stood a tall, white pedestal with a small, white sculpture of a bulging-headed, Mickey Mouse-like character.

Even though I was looking at a book, the picture began moving panning toward the side, as if I were watching a video on a TV or computer. I felt like I knew the view I had been looking at. But now that the view was shifting, I was feeling less and less familiar with it. The idea of what place I was looking at had only slowly been dawning on me. Now I was losing my focus on what I was looking at.

At the same time, two girls, maybe both Asian girls, began talking near me. One of the girls was my friend. The other girl was my friend's friend, though she may have been my friend as well. My friend and I may have been on some kind of trip together. My friend and her friend were now talking about the various attractions in whatever city we were visiting. (Oddly enough, we may have been standing in the same place that the photo in the book was showing.)

I needed to get back to the first view this moving photo had shown. I put my finger down on the paper and swiped my finger over to the left. The photo, which had been panning off to the right, now moved left (I think). It now reached the original spot. This view looked mostly like the original view, even though I think there were some changes to the view that looked a little uncanny and frustrating to me.

I suddenly called out to the two girls, "Look! It's the Disney Store in New York! I can recognize it!" The girls may have looked at the photo for a moment, not really paying attention to what I was saying. Then they may have looked away. I had felt like it was really important for me to show that I knew the view. I was trying to prove to the girls that I had lived in New York, and that I knew the sights of New York. I was starting to think that nobody really believed anymore that I had ever lived in New York.

would she fly the spaceship?

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was floating, probably over some kind of computerized-looking river and landscape. I was actually standing on some rectangle, maybe ten meters long and five meters wide. A similar rectangle floated about 5 meters over my head. The squares were a tannish, electronic color. The river was a mixture of purple and tan, the liquidy flowing of it making it look like chrome. The city in the distance, as well as the sky, were also some kind of tannish, electronic color.

A man sat on the floating rectangle with me. He was either sitting in a wheelchair or in a regular chair. He was old, and he seemed to be too weak to stand. I admired him, and he was in a position of authority, but he didn't have any authority over me. I think I probably would have liked to work for him. But it seemed like that wasn't going to happen.

The man asked me about my old friend, KU. He told me he wanted her for some project, which was for operating some vehicle, possibly a car, but probably a spaceship.

I called KU somehow. She appeared. The old man spoke back and forth with KU about the project. I may have had to intercede somehow, occasionally, to help KU understand exactly what the old man was saying.

It seemed like KU actually wasn't interested in taking the assignment. I really wanted KU to take the assignment. It sounded really exciting, and I was sure that once she started it she'd really like it. But I knew that I couldn't push her to do anything. The best way to try to persuade KU would be by remaining cheerful and explaining the good points of the project. If she accepted, she accepted. If she didn't, she didn't.