I've been having variations on certain kinds of dreams for my entire life, which kind of makes me wonder if I have things that I need to somehow resolve. The radio dead air dream has mostly subsided, and I haven't had that in a few years. This morning I woke up to the restarting college or back-to-school dream. The scenery looked really different this time, and I think I was returning to a school in Georgia or the Carolinas or something. The feelings were different this time, so I wanted to write them down while they were fresh. Most notably, I was thinking in the dream about what the feelings are in the dream. That's super meta.
I do think these dreams are rooted in anxiety, but it's almost reassuring to see that the anxiety isn't rooted in a social context, like it used to be. It was less about wanting to belong. Now it's more about obligations, like I need to finish this degree. This time I even explained to someone that I had to take a few more classes to finish, then realized that I already graduated, and that this was for some bonus qualification. I got lost in some building that was half closed, but I needed to get to the registrar's office before it closed to drop a class that I didn't need (probably because I already graduated). A group of people were counting on me to set up some kind of outing with reservations and stuff for that evening, which is obviously a tie-in to work responsibility in real-life. The vision of a campus was so vivid. Unlike the last time I had the dream theme, a few months ago, I was not an RA.
The stand-out feeling was about the start of something new, and the relatively unlimited potential about what that means. Despite my feelings about the way actual college went for me, I always had a very optimistic outlook at the start of each year. In the dream, I thought, what can I get involved with that will feel validating? I leaned into certain things with confidence, like doing radio or coaching volleyball. That's the thing that has changed the most in these dreams over the last two decades. Anxiety to succeed and be a part of something used to be the driver, but now I seem to be confident, and the anxiety is just about completing more mundane tasks. I guess that's some kind of weird progress.
There is a life transition that's not as far away as it once seemed. My view on what "retirement" means has changed dramatically, and now it's a thing where I'm not so much going to stop working, but feel financially secure enough to try other things part-time, with no real risk. Loafing will be possible, but not entirely likely. I'm trying to set this at seven years from now, which is doable if there isn't some huge market crash and I'm working consistently. I think this version of the dream I had plays into that, the movement toward doing something else in a new period in my life. That will be exciting, and involve staying in this house at least a year (to not be in the tax bracket where gains in selling the house wreck me), then moving... somewhere. For now I think it would be in the area still, but it's still a ways off.
Leaning into what I know, acknowledging that with age comes wisdom and abilities, is kinda neat. I think we tend to treat life as a place that you're going, with certain outcomes, and it feels good to think that you actually have some of those outcomes. I hope that it makes it more possible for life to be a place that you are, instead of an endless cycle of milestones to reach.
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