This notebook opens at the beginning of September, 2008. At this time I was preparing to take the final test I needed to take in order to get licensed as an equity research analyst: my FINRA Series 86. My passing this test (sometime in the beginning of September) was a pretty big milestone in my life. Passing this test, I was unarguably accepted into the position into which I'd been promoted about four months previously. I had proved to myself that I could, in fact, based on my own merits, attain at least some degree of professional achievement.
However, right at about the same time as I was passing this test, the financial crisis was in full swing. Companies were going out of business or trying desperately not to go out of business. My company merged with another company in order to save it. In my department, the two companies were nearly identical, creating, basically a 100% redundancy. Suddenly I was faced with at least a 50% chance of losing my job.
This, however, inspired the team I worked with to pull together a series of research reports we'd been working on and get them out the door much more quickly, I believe, than we likely would have. We initiated research coverage on a whole new industry. I'd had quite a bit to do with these reports. And they were the first reports that had my name on them. That felt like quite an achievement.
Not long after this, my grandfather passed away. Thankfully, my grandfather really knew when he was close to death. He called me back home to Colorado to be there with him over his last couple of days. I've already explained below/before that my grandfather's death, and some episodes surrounding it, affected me greatly.
I think my dreams reflect a lot of the events of my life during this time very plainly. I also find it interesting that my co-worker DE and my boss BS play such large parts in the dreams of this notebook. I think I dream of them as they are themselves. But I would say that the dreams are mostly dreams of myself, projected into the characters of DE and BS.
The first dream in particular is a dream very plainly (to me now, a few years later) combining an episode of DE's outrageous actions with an episode, from about a year and a half earlier, of my own outrageous actions. It could also be seen as previewing an episode of my own outrageous actions in December of 2008, where I basically cursed out the head of my department in a drunken tirade.
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