The time period for this notebook was roughly a year into my time working on Wall Street. As I'm sure I (will) have mentioned above, I finished up a year-long Americorps program working for the New York City parks department in October of 2005. Because of student loan issues, I really needed to get a steady job with decent pay, so I could afford to live in New York and pay off my loans.
Having done temp work in the corporate world in New York in 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2004, I figured I would go back to that. I got into a job on Wall Street, and I basically stayed on Wall Street until I had a nervous breakdown and left my second Wall Street job in July of 2011.
I'm sure that looking back, a year into my time at my job in 2006, I was reflecting on a lot of things I could have done or felt I should have done. A lot of my dreams in this notebook reflect a desire to return to the nature (or "nature") of the parks. But they also show a lot of the disgust I had while working in the parks. I actually spent a lot of time in the parks wading through some pretty gnarly rivers, lakes, ponds, etc., and cleaning up some messes in the parks that still sort of gross me out.
But I think a lot of that disgust shows -- my own sort of prejudice toward other people and my disgust at not being in social situations I felt I deserved to be in. I think one big problem I've had -- and tried to combat! -- all my life is that I feel like I'm too good for every single situation I'm in. I am humble in a lot of ways, but incredibly arrogant in a lot of ways. It makes me feel horrible.
Another thing I will discuss below at the preface for notebook eleven is that in January of 2007, the place I lived in was broken into. I didn't have much the burglars thought to be of value. But my place was kind of thrown into disarray, and I felt violated. I pretty much decided the very same day to leave my place and move into another place.
The place I had lived in was in a largely Jewish, Israeli, and Hasidic part of Crown Heights. I loved it. And I lived below an Israeli woman I loved quite a bit. However, a couple of her younger male relatives moved in at some point. They really hated me. They would shout things out the window at me when I'd leave for work in the morning or come home at night, like "Run for your life," etc. So when my place got broken into I decided to run for my life.
I also decided to rent an actual apartment. For a lot of reasons, all through my after leaving college, I'd lived in rented rooms. The exceptions to that were when I worked for the National Park Service and got my housing for free. In Arizona I got a place all to myself. And for a large portion of the time I spent in New Mexico I got a place all to myself. And the place I was living in Crown Heights in 2006 was a place by itself. But the rent situation was the same as if I were renting a room.
I had been afraid all these years -- I mean, I left college in 1998, and this was the beginning of 2007 -- to expose my credit to people to get approved for an actual apartment rental. I didn't actually believe I would be accepted for an apartment rental. And I was really surprised when I was accepted. And the apartment I moved into in January of 2017 was the place I stayed in until I left New York City for good in January of 2012. And one thing I find very strange is that one of my dreams seems to foreshadow the address of the place I ended up moving to.
So I was afraid of having my credit exposed to real estate agents. And I feel like the theme of being exposed looms large in a lot of my dreams. I'm afraid of being exposed by the people I worked with on Wall Street as a fraud. But I'm also afraid of my sexuality being exposed. In a lot of my dreams, my bedroom is at work, and people do investigations of my room for women's clothing, women's underwear, etc. I'm worried in these dreams about being treated like a criminal for wearing women's clothing. In other dreams my transvestism is compared to drug addiction.
I also noticed in a few of these dreams a theme that still rules my life. Even though I've always wanted to invite people into my house, into my life, I've always felt like my house is too dirty, or too poorly furnished, for me to invite people over. I'm also always of people finding out about my fetish, etc. -- even though most people I have as friends nowadays know all of that as a part of my life. So it shouldn't be a worry. But, still, I feel so dirty and gross, both about the actual condition of my house and about my own fetish, sexuality, etc., that I still can't invite people over to my house. There also is a feeling of being stalked by the people who live around me that makes me afraid of inviting people over to my house.
But this fear has been a part of my life basically since the first time I brought a girl over to my house, in 1999. It's persisted all the way through now, 2017. It's really crazy to imagine this.
I think in these dreams I also see a lot of jealousy toward my friend R because he has his life so well put together. I think this jealousy was especially strong at this time, as I was starting to make good money for myself, for the first time in my life. Keep in mind that at this time I was twenty-nine years old. That's pretty old to start making a decent living.
My friend R worked, like -- obviously! -- so many other normal humans do, to make a good life for himself as soon as he graduated from college. And he always welcomed me into the good life he was in the process of creating for himself -- though always at the expense of making me feel really horrible about myself, my intelligence, my life choices, and just about everything except, for some reason, my artistic sensibilities.
This got even worse as my friend R got more and more involved with his girlfriend and now-wife (I think) L. L, in her own way, liked me a lot. But she was really impatient with me and the way I was just floating along with my life. I think both R and L seemed really upset with what appeared to be my lack of artistic ambition. They both felt like I was a talented writer who was not standing up for himself and was just letting his life away. But L's frustration about all that expressed itself through bullying, which just made me feel even worse about myself.
But by late 2006, I was starting to see a possibility that I myself could make a lot of money and take care of myself. Later on, in 2007, I would start thinking of ways I could invite R and L into my "good life." But I think in late 2006, after spending so long looking at my friend R as a big brother (I still, even though I haven't spoken with him in nearly eight years, think of him as a big brother) and even a father/mother figure, I started to individuate from him. And I think a lot of that individuation process came out through even more intense jealousy against him and a feeling that he was trapping me and a feeling that I needed to "defeat" him or "destroy" him somehow. So a lot of that stuff comes through in dreams, too.
I think there are some images that come through strongly in my dreams, from a lot of the art and literature I was studying in preparation for a screenplay I was writing about the Irish Saint Columba. And there is a lot of archetypal imagery coming from my studies of Jung. There is a lot of imagery related to my readings on the history of psychic phenomena and paranormal research -- including a funny appearance by 19th-century (?) psychic D.D. Home. There is also a lot of imagery related to military jets, which I started studying a lot more around this time. And there are a lot of dreams related to UFOs. I'm sure UFOs in particular had been in my dreams for quite some time.
But I also feel like conspiracy theory was something I was getting more into studying. The study of conspiracy theory became a larger and larger part of my life. I think in some ways it was harmful to my mental health. I think it was definitely something that led to the nervous breakdown that led to the end of my Wall Street career in 2011 and led to me getting continually worse mentally until I left New York in January of 2012.
But, at the same time, conspiracy theory was really my first independent study of history. By studying conspiracy theory, which is pretty much fiction, I learned how to study actual history. I'm still pretty lazy when it comes to studying actual history. But I'm a lot better than I was ten years ago. And my ability to study history comes partly from my study of conspiracy theory.
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