I should’ve known that since I’d had a wonderfully, relaxing Labor Day weekend, followed by a three-day work week, had attended the best concert I’ve ever seen and had participated in the best capoeira performance ever that the week following all that joy would be painful. Literally. Monday was the first day of spirit week, when we showed our school spirit by dressing up as a Hollywood star; so I dressed up as “Storm” from the Xmen in order to show that I was Halle Berry. Granted, my white wig was a little discolored and my cape was a bit raggedy since that’s been my fall back Halloween costume for years, but the students and my colleagues loved it. Capoeira training later that night was quite good as well. I had no major body pain and trained with my former intensity before I’d started experiencing the middle age back blues.
By Tuesday, a lot of bureacratic bullshit had taken a hold of me. It was all I could do to get to a good stopping point at work and drive to a diner to eat before attending my monthly Romantic Writers’ meeting. I was in luck since the special was chicken and dumplings and they offered chocolate pecan pie as one of their desserts. It should go without saying that I had my “medicine” aka a glass of red wine in addition to every other culinary delight.
Our meeting was entertaining and informative as they usually are and I left feeling good. That night, I woke up in the middle of the night in what was the closest to a panic attack as I’ve ever come. I hadn’t broken out into a sweat nor was my heart racing, but I couldn’t go back to sleep.
I dragged ass at school the next day.I entertained the thought of going into the first hour of the two-hour capoeira training, but figured that getting an extra hour of sleep would serve me better since the twenty-minute drive home from work was a waking challenge. Besides, now that my capoeira group offered classes on Saturdays, I’d still get my second day of training then.
Once over the hump, I sailed into the weekend, exhausted, but I still attended my Friday night bikram yoga class, which was not overcrowded since many people were at ACL.
I incorrectly figured that I’d sleep like a baby, but once again, I woke up in the middle of the night. This time, a normal, random dream turned into a nightmare. I dreamed that my students were watching a movie that I had not authorized. When I asked them what they were watching, they told me it was a remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” I told them that the original with Donald Sutherland was better. Then, my mind kept replaying the ending of that movie.
That’s when I finally woke up. I’ve tried to figure out the significance of that dream since I’m currently reading a dream interpretation book, but the best I can come of with is that my fear at work is becoming a teaching robot who uses scripted lessons rather than being the creative teacher that I’ve always been before moving to TX. In my dream, “robot” changed to “pod person.”
At least I returned to sleep and had a wonderful Saturday complete with painting before both capoeira and tango classes, then hanging with friends to watch a pay-per-view boxing match and later salsa dancing. Despite all those wonderful activities, I still had an anxiety dream. Even though this was pretty mild compared to the other anxiety-producing dreams, this dream made me anxious because I had changed money from US currency to a foreign currency. My biggest concern was the locals discovering that I had such a wad of money on me. I divided up the money and put it in two different places in my purse, then I went with a friend to go shopping. I don’t think that in real life, I know who the “friend” was and I don’t recall what I was shopping for, but I did manage to secure the money.
I can interpret that dream two ways. The first way is that since I’ve self-published my first novel, Tribe of One, I have dabbled into being a small business woman. As a matter of fact, my latest pursuit will be attending a free two-hour seminar about how to start or run a small business.
The second, longshot interpretation is working outside the States again. Eleven out of sixteen of my teaching years have been outside of the States; so the foreign money could be a sign of making money out of the States since I’ve done that before.
Nonetheless, my daily barometer continues to be my happiness. I usually guide how much I can humanly do in any given day based on how much time I have to do things and go from there. Now that my emotional pendulum has swung back and forth, perhaps this week will be “normal.”