nightmares

I've been having both figurative and literal nightmares over the past few weeks.

Literal nightmares... some psychologists say that dreams, both good and bad, are a way of your subconscious reconciling the days events and stray thoughts over night to give you a clean slate the following day. After a building birthday party (one of my neighbors just hit 40), I crawled into bed and dozed off. I dreamed I was walking around my neighborhood, and discovered that the people living three doors down from me had a swimming pool. It was brilliantly exciting, since I'd spent the whole summer looking for friends with pools (I didn't do that in real life, it was just the way the thing went).

While giddily imagining the fun that could be had right here in my neighborhood, I got a phone call from the police. I was advised to come home immediately. I walked up the street to my building, completely destroyed. A semi-truck had plowed through the fence that separates us from the highway, plowed into the side, and caused the building to collapse. Everything was destroyed... and worse yet, two of my neighbors were home and had been killed -- but not identified. Worse still, no one answered their phone when I called. It was all very tightly wound suspense until... I woke up. Four walls still around me. Cat snuggled on my arm. People still alive. And a sickening feeling of dread and horror still lodged in my stomach.

Stray thoughts, stray thoughts. Since I'd been hanging out with my neighbors one of the things that came up was when we had the truck crash into the building a few months ago. Required some extensive repairs, but the building remained in tact and not structurally damaged. We talked about roof issues and whatever else. I don't think it meant anything, just that it congealed in a dreadful way.

The figurative nightmares? Work, for one. The new location is ... for lack of a better word... a shithole. The staff is lazy, listless, and untrained. NOTHING was being done properly. Members are generally pretty rude, though that may have a lot to do with the unconcerned treatment they received from the staff for the past several years. I've spent two weeks in quiet observation, trying to fix quietly as things went horribly wrong, though I broke yesterday after a poorly communicated and planned event (how poorly communicated and planned? I didn't know it was happening until 300 people showed up at the door) collided with an injury. There's so much common sense stuff that isn't getting done and I have to wonder if it's worth trying to teach common sense... or to just wipe the slate clean and start again with people who *get* it. It's not soley my decision, of course, which is probably a good thing. I can be a little rash when it comes to stuff like this.

And healthwise... I'm just feeling a bit off. A scratchy throat here... a little arm pain there... but I'm still not smoking. Maybe it's just part of my equilibrium being thrown off by quitting that I'll just have to readjust to. Meanwhile, I'm catching every bit of sleep I can and trying desperately to leave work at work to reduce stress. Easier said than done.