As I began this notebook, I had only been out of work for about three weeks. As I'd mentioned in other posts, I had been let go from a job, though, technically, I hadn't been officially laid off. I was still on the payroll, receiving paychecks, for three months -- as long as I didn't secure any other employment. Basically I was given a three-month paid vacation.
I was surprised to see how the dreams at the beginning of this notebook reflected my worries at this time. In two of the first few dreams, I have to prove to people -- a group of thugs in one dream, my mom and family in another -- that I am of consequence, that I am somebody, and that I have achieved something in my life.
I really felt like, when I was laid off from my position, it was the end of whatever I'd been building for myself. The only thing I'd be able to do from then on, I feared, was prove who I'd been, and give that as a reason why people should think that I was, in the present, somebody worth respecting.
It's also interesting to see how often the CEO of my company appears in these dreams. I felt, at the time, like I was close to my CEO. I spent a lot of time, of my own accord, in meetings with high-level people at my company. And it was my goal to get close with those high-level people and, I hoped, with the CEO, eventually. These dreams may have been my way of unbinding myself from my ambitions, or of fulfilling my ambitions through my dreams, because they would not, obviously, ever be fulfilled in waking life.
I also feel like a lot of these dreams have an interesting color to them, which has been lent to them by the subjects I was studying. At the time, I was studying and compiling subject matter for a screenplay. Toward the timeframe of the end of this notebook, I had probably started writing the screenplay.
My studies for the screenplay had actually begun in early 2008, when I'd immersed myself in studies of imagery I'd experienced in my dreams. I'd attempted to write the screenplay in early 2008, in fact, based on what little I'd studied. But the attempts were pretty lousy.
With the free time I'd been granted by my job, I was able to devote myself fully to studying. I threw myself into studying with a devotion I hadn't applied in perhaps four years. My life became devoted to my studies, like it had been when I'd first moved to New York City in 1998.
While I felt the life I'd been creating for myself, with a business career, dying pathetically, I probably also felt my old life, the life I'd idealized in my earlier years, the life of a scholar and artist, resurrecting. That mood, as well as the imagery I was studying, most likely informed a lot of the mood and imagery of the dreams of this notebook.
I make it all sound like it's so important. But obviously it isn't. I mean, look at me now. Who am I? I really am nobody.
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