What I Do While I Sleep ...

I have very little in life to complain about, but I'll have to admit that I don't like this 5:00 a.m. schedule that the Jazzman is currently working. His alarm goes off at 4:08, and then he hits the snooze button and I lie there waiting for it to go off again at 4:15. He then tiptoes around getting ready to leave, leans down and kisses me good-bye around 4:35, then putters around the kitchen until around 4:50. Some Most days I am so completely wide awake, I cannot go back to sleep.

This morning I was awake with a headache at 3:00. My Excedrin finally kicked in around 6:15, and I slept until 7:30. But, oh, did I dream.

I was living in Washington again. My boys were about the current ages of my grandchildren. I decided to go out for a bike ride. But this was my Mother's hand-me-down bike. (Please acknowledge that my mother is 98!! And 8 months!!) (And that I haven't ridden a bike in, oh, 20 years.)

I decided to ride over to a Georgetown neighborhood I knew to find a café for a cup of tea and a pastry. I was balancing a little pillow (of Mother's that currently sits on our couch) to make the bicycle seat more comfortable. I had my iPhone and was carrying a pair of Tyler's outgrown pajamas.

As I was riding along, I couldn't remember where the café was - which way to turn. I stopped by the side of a residential road and —out of the blue — there was my late husband's daughter. She was older-looking (she's 51), heavier and taller (she's 5'2" on a tall day) and with a man I didn't know (prompting me to wonder if she and her saintly husband had separated). I told her my dilemma and she pointed me in the direction I needed to go. After she left, I realized I forgot to ask her if she got the package I sent her at Christmas. (I sent her a video I found of her dad's ski trips to Italy, and she has yet - a month later - to acknowledge receipt!) And then I remembered I meant to give her the pajamas for one of her sons.

I looked on my iPhone at the map app to confirm where I was trying to go, and suddenly my phone was infected with a virus. I was worried about having left the boys alone for so long, but couldn't get the phone to give me a screen to dial out. I realized I needed to get my phone to the Apple store to have someone look at it and clean out the virus.

So I got back on my bike and started riding towards Wisconsin and M to find the Apple store. I took a wrong turn and was lost again. I stopped my bike, walked into a dry cleaner, and asked them where the Apple store was. The man at the counter was on the phone, but a young woman gave me directions.

I got back on my bike and … woke up.

!

Now do you see why I hate going back to sleep after the Jazzman leaves? When I wake up from one of these dreams, I'm exhausted!!

Making Space

I've been having the craziest dreams lately. While on vacation, I had several dreams about my lifelong best friend. I had noticed a change in her Facebook status, but had not heard any news from her, so was feeling hurt and rejected (which, you know, I do so well and automatically jump to in any slightly questionable situation!) (oh, and then thinking it must have been a Facebook error!). I kept dreaming about her and times we had shared in the past.

Last night I dreamed about a past husband and the mother of a past very.serious.boyfriend. I kept seeing things—earrings I had given the mother, plastic storage containers with my name on them, newspapers from the past. It was totally bizarre.

In trying to figure out how to interpret these dreams, I keep coming back to the fact that big changes are coming in my work life. I wonder if my mind knows it needs to make room—to clear out a bunch of drivel—to make room for all the new things I'll be learning in the next six months.

Lest you worry this change has anything to do with the Jazzman, rest assured that all is well. Actually, he's in most of the dreams and I always seem to come home to him or get wrapped in his arms when the dream gets too strange.

Isn't the mind a strange and magical thing?

That being said, I would be glad for these dreams to stop and to get my normal peaceful sleep pattern back!

Extreme Courage / Abject Terror

Throughout my adult life, beginning with my first divorce, friends and colleagues have commented on how courageous I was. I have routinely disputed these statements. I never felt courageous. I think I felt it was a survival instinct. The harder action in the marriage, I thought at the time, would have been to stay in the marriage and make it work. But it takes two to make a marriage work, and maybe—in the long run—that would have been impossible.

Looking back at my work history, the best jobs usually come to me serendipitously. No courage involved; just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I got my first IBM job as a secretary with a temp agency. IBM liked me, hired me, and then recognized my abilities and promoted me into a programming career path. My first contract position with CTG came because an IBM manager wanted me to come write marketing materials for him and he got me the only way he could. The most amazing serendipity occurred on the day of John's death: I received a phone call completely out of the blue from a man I had taken a Lotus Notes class from two years before. I had never applied for a job with this company, had never spoken with this man after the class. He called to ask if I'd come work for them. That's astonishing to me!

Sometimes my leaving a current position to go to something that looked a little more promising took an enormous leap of faith. Sometimes it was just following my gut. Today I took an action that was a combination of leaping and following my gut: I quit my job to become a freelance something-or-other—writer, editor, web editor, executive assistant, …. I have only one contract lined up: performing all those tasks for my son. I think I performed a courageous act.

When I handed in my resignation this morning, I was immediately washed with a feeling of relief. As the day wears on, I'm swimming in terror.

The rightness of what I've done is pooling around at the base of my gut. I know that my leap of faith will pay off. I've been dreaming of it long enough that I know it's right. But right now I feel like my head is about to explode from the fear.

What's the worst that could happen? I guess it's that I would declare bankruptcy. But I know within myself I couldn't do that. Twenty years ago, when I got custody of my son, I worked a full-time and two part-time jobs while in law school to provide for us and to pay his boarding school tuition. It was the right thing to do. Tired? Damned right. I was tired constantly, but I knew I was doing the right thing. And it paid off—I credit much of who he is today to the education he received at Interlochen Arts Academy. If I need to do that again—to work multiple jobs—to pay my bills, at age almost-60, can I keep up that pace? I don't know. What I do know is that I instinctively, religiously, try to do the right thing.

So here we go. The known is behind me, or will be in two weeks. That includes a grueling commute that costs me a minimum of two hours a day and thousands of dollars a year, and a workday spent in a job where I don't feel appreciated or respected. The unknown is ahead, but aspects of this unknown can be seen. What I can see is that I'll be working for a bright and mature young man who knows the quality of my work and respects me. I will commute from my bedroom to my home office. I'll have blessed time to walk around the block or spend a normal-commute-time hour in my sewing room. And I'll make a difference to my employer.

I can't even imagine the fear and panic that must have swirled around my son when he took his leap of faith almost two years ago to become an entrepreneur. He was a father with a wife who was just beginning her own entrepreneurship and two young children. All I am is a grandmother with a lot of bills.

Good God—if he can do it (and become so successful), surely I can follow in his footsteps.

Here's hoping.

If I Had A Company

…I would set aside a small room dedicated to crafts. People could spend their lunch hours there, soothing their souls.

Or, when troubled and having a challenging day, as I am today, they could take a 10-minute craft break. Much more healthy than a smoke break.

How much nicer my day would be if I could go sew a seam or knit a row or even just look at a pattern and dream.

Oh well, back to this nasty uncooperative hyperlink.

What would you include in your mythical office space?