Summary version: Work is uncertain right now and this uncertainty followed me into my dreams in a very morbid way. O_O
Longer version: I have been at my company since December 2002, and it provided my first steady, full-time job, as well as my second and third. I have been there what feels like a long time and I enjoy it there. I've always liked my co-workers and my bosses, and I get kick-arse benefits. I didn't particularly enjoy my first job there, but I liked my second and adore my third (current) job.
However, lately there's been trouble. There are two bosses in my department, people who have been there forever and we know are looking out for our interests. Well... they both left about the same time, leaving my department leaderless.
This might not be a problem or a serious cause for worry, except for a variety of factors which boils down to, 1) my team is split between two states, 2) the VP favors the other team, 3) he made comments which have lead part of my team to believe we will eventually be let go, 4) my company has done this exactly before - let one team go entirely, and 5) my company has a tendency to repeat past mistakes. =P
Is there true cause for worry? Honestly, I don't know. I took the comments which the VP made completely differently than the other, more pessimistic members of my team. It's a critical case of interpretation.
I resolved to update my resume, just in case, but not "shop around" until some kind of confirmation came in either way. I wasn't particularly worried, and honestly, I'm still not particularly worried... because even if our team is eventually let go, it would be sometime in December probably, which is theoretically plenty of time to find another job. As I've told others, I haven't been losing sleep over it, and this is true.
But, as this morning proved, I have been DREAMING about it. In an analogy so obvious that even I can't miss it.
I dreamed that I learned I was going to die, something I gather was slow and painful. Instead of suffering though it, the doctors were making me go through euthanasia. I would be put to sleep, permanently. The date was set (much too soon), and I knew I couldn't get out of it.
I worried about what would happen to my parents, how they would cope, how they would pay for my funeral (then recalled the life insurance policy I get from my company), if my mother would die of a broken heart. But I never considered trying to get out of it. It felt as if this was something that HAD to happen, and it would be useless to struggle. I would be put to sleep whether I was ready or not, so I was calm and just did my best to prepare for it.
At one point, my mother or similar asked me in a broken voice if I was really that calm and ready to die. I broke out in tears. "Of COURSE I'm not ready! I don't WANT to die yet!"
There's a jump, and the next thing I knew, the interim-boss we have for my department at work was helping me to fill out paperwork associated with death. At the same time, a co-worker on my team gave me a present of a bathing suit specially designed to show off flab. "It'll show off your extra weight, and encourage you to lose it. It'll look great once you lose it though!" I thanked him for his gift, mentally sad that I wouldn't have a chance to lose the weight and look good in the bathing suit before I died.
There's another jump, and two children (both aspects of me) were racing through a complicated, maze-like structure, with sharp, sometimes nonsensical passages; sterile, hospital white walls; and cold floors. (Think of something like a mix between an Egyptian tomb with a hospital's cold influence and efficiency.) The skinny child encourages the fatter child through a small opening in the maze/tomb. But the fatter child/I couldn't make it, so I went another way, up a flight of stairs. And at the top was a simple room with four or five large, blue, metallic coffins. The skinny child actually got on top of one and bounced tentatively on it a little before seeming to realize what it was and getting down, rather sadly.
It ends as I'm making the journey to be put down, and all I can think, over and over, in an ever-increasing scream in my thoughts is, "I don't want to die! I'm not ready yet! I don't want to die!"
I wake up about then. Oddly enough, the dream didn't feel like a nightmare. Despite the morbid topic and how it ended, I was calm and collected throughout the dream, and I woke up feeling normal. So while not a good dream, it wasn't a nightmare, either.
And I knew almost immediately what the entire dream had been an analogy for. Work, and the uncertainty surrounding it there. While consciously I'm not worried, it seems obvious now that subconsciously, I am. To see the death of my department feels inevitable and unstoppable. And right now, I am unable to see what exists for me (career-wise) beyond it. Hence the analogy to death in my dream.
The blue of the coffins represent my company (blue is the primary color) and specifically my co-workers. It seems fitting that our interim-boss was the one filling out the paperwork for "death."
As the dream proves, despite how calm and logical I'm taking it, I am not ready to move on yet. This is true; I am NOT mentally ready. I like my co-workers, my job, and I liked my (now ex) boss. I was and am not ready for such a drastic change. But things change whether I am ready or not. How drastic the change is, is not yet know, but already things have changed and will continue to change. So all I can do is accept it, however unwillingly, and try to move past it.
*sigh* Sorry for the depressing post. I'm just... working through it right now, and likely will for the next few months. I know things will turn out alright, but uncertainty and the unknown scares me, and this definitely qualifies.
--Ashvolt