I’m starting my new job on Monday; my last day at my former company was this Tuesday past.I would say that I will miss specific people from my old job, but I will be keeping in touch with those people. Rather, I will miss the hour-to-hour daily interaction with them. But I am also excited about getting to do new work.
Still, no matter how calm I feel, my anxieties always find some way of sneaking up and poking me. In some cases, these are not even anxieties about the future. I have the unenviable ability to get anxious about things that happened in my past. I’m learning to deal with this character trait as I grow older, but it’s still there.
Last night I dreamed that it was my last day at my old company. I had a long list of tasks to complete before I could leave—a condition in fair alignment with my actual last day. However, in my dream we were not in our regular office. Instead, we were working in an ancient house that was on the verge of being condemned. It was full of piles of refuse and bric-a-brac, objects from the thirties and forties. It reminded me of a day when I was six or seven, when my cousins and I explored the house of an uncle who had died years before we were born. In that house, we found an old black fountain pen and several unopened bottles of root beer from a defunct bottler. Everything was covered with a thick layer of pasty dust.
The dream-bound workplace, however, was bigger, with labyrinthine corridors and hidden closets. We were expected to complete our notably modern assignments without access to modern equipment of any sort. At one point I found myself naked, and I went off into the depths of the house, searching through the antique armoires for clothing that would fit me. How am I going to deal with this and get all my work done? I kept thinking.
Finally I woke. For a moment or two I lay in my bed, turning my anxiety from side to side, just looking at it. But I already had my last day, I thought. That chapter is oh-ver.
This time I was lucky. Reality was on my side. I only hope I have some evidence at hand come the next dream.
