Last night I had the “sure to fail” dream, in which I am a student who didn’t do enough work. I’ve had it before, with homework forgotten and books unread. This dream was a doozy, though: it was the last day of my senior year at a university that required a senior project, and I hadn’t even started one.
Nothing like that ever happened in real life, of course. Seniors have advisors who regularly check on their progress toward graduation, and I was a dutiful student who never failed a class for leaving my work undone. I did my assigned reading, too, and never had a bookshelf that looked like this:
(Photo credit: John Liu)
I haven’t left any tasks neglected at my job, either. Before doing my timesheet on Friday evening and vacating my desk for the weekend, I got all my email properly sorted and left my inbox empty. All tasks were finished, and everything appeared to be in good order.
Saturday was a lazy day without much going on, and before I went to bed, I did have a thought that my house could use some dusting and other spring cleaning. A dusty house is not a calamity, though, and I can’t imagine it would have triggered such a dramatic failure dream.
A senior project could have been a symbol of carefully preparing for a transition, but I don’t anticipate major changes in the next few years. Retirement is not on my near horizon, and I haven’t been looking for a different career. Maybe it was general anxiety about keeping up with a fast-changing world. Everyone has more than enough of that nowadays!