Rant #3,098; Dreaming

Let me start off by saying that this Rant is not sports-related, although I am going to start it off with a sports reference.

Mickey Mantle played 18 seasons for the New York Yankees, and was undeniably one of the greatest pure athletes ever to play the game.

He retired during spring training in 1969, and he later related that throughout his retirement life, he would often dream that he was still playing ball, coming up to the plate in big situations, and at least during his dreams, he often struck out.

But even asleep, he regularly dreamed of “work,” his office being a ball field.

And yes, nearly four years into my own “semi”-retirement, I often dream of the last destination of my career, the office that I worked in for nearly a quarter century that went under nearly four years ago.

The actual office pops up in my dreams on a regular basis, as do some of the people that I worked with for all that time.

It is really a weird feeling to wake up in the morning and remember these dreams so vividly, but I do.

And a lot of times, they are kind of worrisome … like I missed a deadline (never happened in all the time I worked there), or that I didn’t do something I was supposed to do (again, never happened when I worked there).

The dreams are never happy; they are almost always featuring scenarios that are simply not good ones, not good ones for dreams or even for reality.

And they are starting to broaden their horizons, into my wife’s work world.

Although they don’t feature any of her co-workers—I didn’t really know any of them—they do feature my wife, and in some situation that finds her, like in my dreams of my old office, in impossible situations.

Earlier this week, I had a dream about her old workplace—a bank—and that the powers-that-be let her down in some way, and were making her feel like she was the villain in the whole thing.

They even had pictures up on the wall of the bank to demonstrate how “bad” a worker she was.

Yes, this is very strange, because she, like me, somehow survived more than two decades working for the same employer, and like me in my own situation she never let them down in any way.

Of course, her situation was quite different than mine, as she retired on her own free will, having had enough after spending more than three decades as a bank teller and a good chunk of that time as the head teller of whatever bank she worked at.

Me, myself and my fellow workers, were told of our company’s demise and had two hours to get our things together and leave.

So the situations were different, but I still dream of those work situations.

But dreaming of my wife’s work situations brings this thing to a whole new level, and I wonder what my dreams will encompass the next time around?

I mean, like I said, in October, it will be four years since I was thrown to the curb; why do I still dream of being at work?

I guess I still cannot fully grasp the fact that I was told I was done at the ripe old age of nearly 62 and a half.

I really think that that is the reason that I constantly dream of work, that all these years later, I still can’t get over what happened to me.

Happily, dreams are not reality, and I still work, still cover the same field, military stores, that I did when I was working full time, but anybody that works from home can tell you that it is way different from working in an office.

There was a recent poll of home-based workers, and the thing that these workers missed the most from working at home was the camaraderie they had with their fellow workers in the office.

Me, I guess I miss that, but I also miss the money … I figure that if I could have found another full-time job, I would probably be making about four times as much as I do now from my current home-based position.

But looking at my dreams, if I dream of people in my old office, then I think I miss that camaraderie that others feel is the most important thing they miss when they work from home.

There is definitely something to all of that … not that we were all best friends at work, but we could always go into one’s office and speak to them during the workday, often about not much of anything, if we and they had the time to hobnob a bit.

Sometimes we spoke about work, but other times, we schmoozed about sports, our families, the weather, or whatever was on our minds at the time.

I guess I do miss that, but I wonder when all this work-related dreaming is going to finally stop …

Will it ever?

Have a nice weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.