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Upon awakening from a lifetime of recallable dreams, I’ve frequently mulled over the feasibility of online dream journaling. However, I’ve resisted making my slumbering nightlife an open book, mainly, because I’ve deemed my content, by and large, to be akin to a bedtime story; in other words, a real yawner. Uh, that is, up till this early a.m., when my R.E.M. sleep story seemed a bit more worthwhile and interweb interweave-able.
It all boils down to a specific dreams’ recursive, bothersome nature; of late, the bizarre manner in which my unconscious mind has been prioritizing a particular narrative; has become unduly fond of (unproductively?) sorting out my time served within a peculiar, particular gated community, a.k.a. Retail Hell (initially, as a sales rep; later on, as an entry level manager).
The, perhaps, unsolvable mystery, here, is why there’d even need to be a nocturnal rehashing of this epoch of my life; these dreams ARE playing out nearly 13 years following my injury-forced early retirement. Additionally, I’d hardly categorize more than 5 of those 30 work years as worthwhile and satisfying. Hence, my headline’s negation of the 1983 Annie Lennox / David A. Stewart’s song title, “Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This”.
Possibly, it’s my having pissed away nearly forty-five percent of my entire life within that milieu, which would account for this phenomenon? Might there simply not be enough of my other life experiences to draw on? My gawd, it’d be bat crap pathetic, indeed, were my so-called career the only aspect that had ever defined me.
Getting down to the actual dream details, they are, at best, phantasmagorical; the slew of farcical / surreal workplace settings, facial flashes of both wretched and wonderful big bosses and fleeting glimpses of the revolving door co-workers who’d been treated just as shoddily as I. Other mystifying dream elements include my neither showing up for work nor completing my assigned tasks on time, utterly failing to carry out the most mundane of work routines and, in the process, completely mucking up everything; all of which, runs totally counter to the actual facts; corroborated by my rock solid, top-notch, annual job performance reviews.
As for “the why” to my experiencing these (worthless?) dreams, the only working theory I can dream up is how that bygone era of my work life had been a walk in the park; when compared to staggering thru today’s zombie apocalypse.
Such an assessment of tough times, doth summon forth the 1967, James Anthony Dean / Paul Riser / William Henry Witherspoon, R&B/Soul musical masterpiece, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted”: these songsmiths’ lead lyric, “As I walk this land with broken dreams” aptly setting the world stage.
Once juxtaposed, such a sentiment is totally relevant to the coronavirus pandemic, which has devastated, debilitated and decimated humanity; to a society sickened by the plague of racial inequality, police brutality, gun violence and mass shootings; to the delusional domestic terrorist sleeper cells, who await their collective alarm clock to go off; to trigger the unleashing of their deadly and destructive plots; all of which could, someday, trump Trump’s own, wide awake nightmare; his fortunately failed January 6th attempt to hack America to death.
Indeed, Sweet Dreams Are (Not) Made Of This.
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Stay Publicly / Properly Masked!
Stay Safe at Home!
Stay Healthy!
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CommonSenseTom 