There's a place

I belatedly got some viral fame for calling out a political opponent on video, then had an old friend over to my place. There was something involving trains.

The job interview went badly. I mean, I certainly feel bad about it. It was largely spent correcting my thinking about the assignment, asking me follow-ups I fumbled on, and correcting my thinking about those.

Not meanly, mind you. The interviewer was thoughtful with all this. And we ended on a fairly positive note, maybe. And I suppose I have a shred of hope if she thinks "This guy is coachable, we can get him right." Which is true. But most places don't want that and I really feel like I'd be starting on the back foot.

So, I don't know. The interview was so brutal it left me feeling I really shouldn't get this job. Which has me spiralling in all sorts of existential ways about what my future looks like and who I am. And I've just been lying in bed recovering for an hour since. My body doesn't want to do life today.

It's not a good feeling, fam.

(As discussed here)

And I have really high hopes -- like, this would be pretty cool for me -- but I have doubts about how I handled it. Like, the second I hit submit, I was like "oh man, I should have thought about that more." I immediately remembered -- haha, a few seconds too late -- some feedback I once got that I was sometimes too succinct. I personally think that's kind of BS, but hey, what if it's not?

That said, I tackled it as authentically as I could, and I stand by it, so if they don't want me they don't want me. But man, it's hard to be Zen on this one. I'm at a year since quitting my job and not only am I ready to get back on the wage train, I don't think I will ever find an opportunity as favorable as this one again. There's a lot of pressure here, much of it self-imposed, but not all. Society does want me to have a job, even if it has never been that clear what said job should be or where to find it.

You know. Everyone wants to be liked. Everyone wants to be picked.

This was not one of those dreams that was in any way arcane, obscure, or difficult to parse. As always it came to me in the near-waking hours before I would have gotten up.

Again, I was at my old workplace. I wanted to talk to a colleague who had just been fired, but there were too many people around. It was also his birthday and he had places to go. I felt somewhat awkward too because I had just been asked, on a freelance basis, to do some work for them, although I ended up excusing myself because I didn't think the work they were asking me to do was necessary. After a brief interlude involving some kind of music video starting Jenna Ortega's sister, I finally did speak to this former work friend. I told him I had more ideas than anything, and scripts going. I told him -- and another co-worker who was fired years ago -- about the pilot I wrote and submitted to an agent, and I said boy, it would be hard to write 13 of these. But you get a bunch of people in a room and start accumulating ideas and it becomes easier, right? He served a cake that I liked and boasted that it was nut-free.

It's for a call centre job, which sounds unglamorous, but it's remote and pays more than my last one. They want me to respond to a case study before giving me an interview, which, ok.

In the waking world, I spent over an hour yesterday on the phone with a former colleague as he brought me up to speed on his recent departure from the company. We discussed old wounds and frustrations and what the path forward looks like.

So naturally I had a dream about that place last night. I was back but not back, kind of just checking in. I was trying to pin down that one director who was away when I left. Perhaps somewhere in my subconscious there's a desire for closure there.

In my first dream of the night I'm at a family gathering trying to help my brother find his shoes, which we do eventually locate in the living room. The second was more interesting.

I'm at a gas station. Apparently I have driven a big rig here. I philosophize on gas companies being interchangable villains of life. Gas, in the dream,is cheaper than real life by a lot.

I wind up at a hole in the wall diner just as some argument has broken out and a bunch of people push past me. Okay. I go to the counter and there are these girls there, Lisa and Katherine, who I used to be on a bowling team with back when I was in high school. We saw each other every Saturday and almost never said a word to each other.

Anyway, Lisa says she has something for me, she's been holding onto it all these years. It's a large sum of cash I somehow helped her acquire. My share. I'm amazed, I didn't know this was coming. I either helped her pick lotto numbers or unknowingly helped her rob a bank, unclear.

So, she takes it out: first a check for a large sum of money, then bills, almost too much to count as I try to make piles. I determine it's about a year's salary. I'm thrilled, you know, I'm not really working right now (besides the occasional big rig haul??) so I could use this. Mel will be happy I've got some cash. While she gives it to me, Lisa recounts a story about her troubled but lovable mother. (In reality I know nothing about her mother.)

We go to part ways. I offer my phone number in case she ever needs to reach me again -- it's taken over twenty years to run into each other, after all -- but she declines, indicating our business is concluded.