![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Another Work Dream
Sep. 8th, 2007 05:45 amI just woke from a dream in which issues and tasks at work started to get more and more stressful and unacceptable, until finally I couldn't take it anymore and decided to leave for good.
Except by that point the tone of things had shifted so that although the people remained the same the context was not my actual day job but more like the last church I attended. I was trying to gather all my possessions and get out before the Sunday morning service was over, and I was all too aware that because of where some things had been placed in the building, and their significance, there might be some argument as to whether or not they were actually mine.
Chief among these items was my own version of the stately lion figure which my mother and sister and I gave to my dad when he got his second Ph.D. For the next twenty or so years it sat in his various offices during his career as a public school administrator, and since his retirement it has held a place of prominence in my parents' home. There is nothing else which we associate more closely with my dad, nothing which more perfectly expresses his regal authority and protection.
But although the lion in my dream looked exactly like my dad's lion, it wasn't his lion, it was mine.
I had everything packed in my car and was outside the building where work/church was being held, but I had taken so long that the service was over and people were looking for me. Before I could get away, my mother was coming down the front steps asking me what I was doing "out here" and was it "on purpose".
I was trying to figure out a non-snarky way to ask how I could have gotten myself outside if it wasn't on purpose, when I woke up.
Once again, my subconscious mind has all the subtlety of a clue-by-four. My job isn't just stressful, it's impeding my spiritual vocation. I have my own authority to claim, authority every bit as valid as my father's. But I still have issues about being "outside" the normal/safe/expected boundaries cherished and reinforced by my upbringing, even though my car is packed and ready for my getaway.
Which brings me back to yesterday, and the voice that was telling me over and over, after I'd checked out of the hotel, that what I'd gone to the island to find was actually something I needed to find and carry within myself.
Except by that point the tone of things had shifted so that although the people remained the same the context was not my actual day job but more like the last church I attended. I was trying to gather all my possessions and get out before the Sunday morning service was over, and I was all too aware that because of where some things had been placed in the building, and their significance, there might be some argument as to whether or not they were actually mine.
Chief among these items was my own version of the stately lion figure which my mother and sister and I gave to my dad when he got his second Ph.D. For the next twenty or so years it sat in his various offices during his career as a public school administrator, and since his retirement it has held a place of prominence in my parents' home. There is nothing else which we associate more closely with my dad, nothing which more perfectly expresses his regal authority and protection.
But although the lion in my dream looked exactly like my dad's lion, it wasn't his lion, it was mine.
I had everything packed in my car and was outside the building where work/church was being held, but I had taken so long that the service was over and people were looking for me. Before I could get away, my mother was coming down the front steps asking me what I was doing "out here" and was it "on purpose".
I was trying to figure out a non-snarky way to ask how I could have gotten myself outside if it wasn't on purpose, when I woke up.
Once again, my subconscious mind has all the subtlety of a clue-by-four. My job isn't just stressful, it's impeding my spiritual vocation. I have my own authority to claim, authority every bit as valid as my father's. But I still have issues about being "outside" the normal/safe/expected boundaries cherished and reinforced by my upbringing, even though my car is packed and ready for my getaway.
Which brings me back to yesterday, and the voice that was telling me over and over, after I'd checked out of the hotel, that what I'd gone to the island to find was actually something I needed to find and carry within myself.
