Painful Dreams

Keeping a dream log might be useful to me some day. Perhaps when I've been institutionalized and a clinical psychologist needs to go back to my history in order to diagnose a problem that I'm fairly certain is present somewhere deep within the gray stuff sitting in the anatomical attic. A couple of months go, I had posted here an account of some peculiar dreams I've had. The weird dreams have returned recently, and I still have no idea what to make of them.

One started with me picking at some sharp objects stuck inside my mouth. I slowly came to realize that there were small pine needles stuck inside the flesh of my mouth. While removing them one by one, I felt the pain that strangely felt real, complete with the sensation of an embedded object being pulled out. There was one last needle to remove, and as I started pulling it, the needle became a flat, wide object that was like a thick tape. As I continued to pull, the tape gradually became a thicker rubber-like material shaped like a thin hose, and then I slowly became aware that the thin hose was my esophagus. The awareness started choking me, and I woke up in a frenzy.

The second dream was equally strange, which started with me noticing that there was something stuck inside my hand. There was a small slit where I could slip my fingers through. As I dug in, I felt around to see what was bothering me. When I got hold of the object, I started pulling slowly to minimize the pain and the blood. What came out strangely looked like a coffee stirrer from McDonald's (white plastic wand, with a flat tab at the end). It's a bizarre object to see in a dream, since I can't remember the last time I went to a McDonald's, and I don't normally drink coffee.

How I have not become an insomniac is beyond me. Despite these dreams, I still like my sleep, and the dreams are completely weird, but they make me laugh. As long as I can laugh about my supposed craziness, I don't need to seek help, right? Right. I love how my cultural background has instilled in me a deep sense of denial so that I can compartmentalize my feelings and bypass emotional distress.

Dodgeball and the Human Experience

A coworker invited me to join her for some dodgeball tournament in Silver Lake today, and we were triumphant. In being the #1 losers. When the announcer named the least-scoring team, the Sexy Panthers, we screamed loud enough for people outside the auditorium to hear. In fact, not even the highest-scoring team sounded quite so jubilant as we did for losing.

Being #1 at sucking aside, dodgeball made me think about the kind of dodging that I normally do at work. Dodging meetings that I do not want to attend, dodging the blame if something goes awry, or even dodging a project that I don't really want to work on. Of all the figurative deflecting, leaps, and bounds that I've been doing lately, the foremost would be to become the target of a layoff.

Just this past week, my employer had let go a few dozen people in what the B-school grads love to call "right-sizing." That is another term for cleaning house, chopping heads, eliminations, and polite firings. But calling it "reduction in force" sounds so much less personal. But the fact of the matter is that people do take layoffs personally. People's identities are shaken, their daily being's justification comes into doubt, and they become uncertain about how to carry on. All of this while they're filling out the unemployment forms.

The most recent round of layoffs were not quite so lethal personally, since nobody in my group got the pink slip. It's almost like I was standing behind the human shield and the first ball to be thrown in the court were being aimed directly at them and not me. But now that the shield is no longer present, I'm beginning to wonder if I will actually need to do more active dodging when the balls come flying in my direction.

Over dinner this evening, my strangely omniscient and calm housemate had said that even if I do get laid off, it doesn't mean anything. While I do feel as though he is in an income bracket that allows him to think so nonchalantly, I pondered if he actually had a point. And I have a slight suspicion he might. Fear is mostly based on uncertainty and our inability to understand something. I do not understand why I need to be laid off, given that I don't think I'm a slacker and I feel like I contribute my share (despite the aforementioned dodging at work). But layoffs, like a lot of decisions or events that we have no control over, do not necessarily make sense to the person who just received the boot.

But people live their lives with quite a lot of things that do not make sense. Many people call this faith. If evolution (or creation), the existence of mankind, human emotions, love, and the presence of a superior being cannot be explained logically, and we're all capable of living and breathing despite of it, I think I can survive a fucking pink slip. Maybe I need to have faith in the sense that I can carry forth despite being laid off, and it will open up new opportunities. Granted, I reserve the full right to cuss as much as I want and perhaps even break a few things after being laid off.

Once those initial human emotions are sufficiently expressed, I will probably go on to what I hope will be something else. I won't count on the next thing to be bigger and better, but it'll merely be something else. At least I can count on that. The rest, as my housemate says, doesn't matter. Just like how it didn't matter that the Sexy Panthers were the #1 losers. What really matters is that I will be entertained along the way, and can laugh about some of it. Even if it comes at my own expense.