Dream Progress

I had one of those ridiculous anxiety dreams this morning, you know those? The ones where you show up late to an important meeting, wearing the wrong thing (or nothing), holding the wrong material (or your tooth brush), and you have only minutes to make it right, but each attempt you make to get back to where you should be gets trammeled by some silly obstacle, like the company toilet overflows but the closest towel is across a field and around a bend, etc...

My dreams like this usually involve distance that increases rapidly as I try to gain. My running slows, no matter how much I focus on my technique to make me faster. And somehow, that weird distance between me and where I want to be, gapes open.

Last night's dream was one of those, but first I showed up to an important meeting wearing a short, red-checked waitress uniform, complete with cute apron and white hat. The meeting was to find out whether I was good enough to get hired on the writing team for this new client. My prospective boss was infuriated, because his new big time client was about to get off the phone and join us. I had just minutes to make my outfit right. As it happened, I'd had a morning restaurant job and forgot to change before I came to the meeting.

So the anxiety unfolded, the toilet did overflow, the distance did open wide (home was far away), my clothing was all wrong...but with each frustration came a modicum of success. As I chased my tail trying to find the right clothes and get back to the meeting on time, I heard in my head how confident in me the boss was. I heard how well he liked my resume, and how talented I would be on this project. Turns out, shoes that I didn't expect but that worked for the occasion showed up where I least expected them. Somehow I found myself in jeans, and that cute red-check dress tucked into the jeans to make quite a hip-looking top.

Maybe I should have turned the apron into a cape, because I made it to the meeting! And in it heard these words: small, break it down, the new client will be into this if you package the project in small pieces, comprehensible and tangible, doable. He likes you. You relate easily. You know how to do it a piece at a time.

I wake up from the dream taking mental notes. Because later this morning, I have a first meeting with a prospective client. :-)