EPTIt's 9:15 AM and I'm awake. Hallelujah, a reasonable sleep cycle has arrived. I woke up feeling very rested, but also very paranoid.
Paranoid? Who feels paranoid when they wake up? Well, I'm a firm believer in the idea that the way we go to sleep, the things on your mind and the things going on in our body, contribute and determine the things you dream about when you're asleep. Too many times my dreams have coincided perfectly with the mood I was in or the situations I found going on in real life. Dreams have been for me an accurate reflection of my current status in waking life.
So, I will try to reverse engineer my dream from last night. I was in a musical. As I was on stage for the first act of the musical, my mind falls asleep. I go through all the motions and singing and dialogue perfectly, but I'm not even consciously aware of the fact that I am there. The dance numbers are fine, the dialogue is correct, the singing is fine, and the act ends. I go backstage and have a realization that I've now woken up, mentally. The people in the company around me are preparing for the second act. But now that I've woken up I realize...
I don't have a goddamn clue what I'm doing here.
I don't know the lines. I don't know the songs, I don't know the dancing, I don't know the dialogue, I don't know ANYTHING about this musical, I don't even know what the name of it is. I try to tell people, find my replacement, find my backup, I can't do it, there's no way I can do this. Nobody really listens because I did a fantastic job in the first act. I tell them I was asleep, but nobody understands what I mean. Everybody thinks I'm playing an odd sort of joke on them. I'm frantic as everyone is backstage changing. My closest friends aren't listening to me, and the second act is about to begin. The curtains go up, the first scene of the second act is beginning, and I pull up the hood of my jacket and go to find my instrument. At this point I realize I was really here to play the music for the event, but somehow auditioned for the stage. My cello is out though, and I have to pack it up so I can take it and leave and get away from this explosive situation before people realize I've been cheating them the whole time and I'm absent on stage for the second act. I can't get to my cello though as I'd have to cross the stage to get it, and as the song ends and the curtain goes down on this scene, an angry mob of thespians approaches.
I try to explain that I never wanted the part, I never even auditioned, I don't know how I knew, I'm not even a good singer, I'm frantic and nervous and afraid. The director hands me a check for one act of one show, and shakes my hand. The sarcasm in her farewell was scathing, and I felt it. But she shakes my hand again with sincerity and says, "In the south this is how we do it." I'm assuming she's referring to always being honorable and polite.
What does this mean? I'm in a position where I had success at something without trying, but when it comes time for the next phase, I'm woefully lost. As I'm writing this blog article, it's 9:39 AM and it just hit me like a bag of bricks. I didn't know what this dream meant until I wrote it down and tried to figure it out, but now it seems obvious. The entire thing is a metaphor for my cello playing. I survived the first 12 years of my musical career on talent alone. There were brief moments of effort and flashes of intense practice, but I have always, for the most part, skirted by because I am admittedly very talented. I'd take that talent away any day and trade it for a work ethic, but here we are. I was mentally asleep in the dream and I have been mentally asleep in my waking life. In both areas I had need to practice and didn't, got by without any effort, and in both areas the moment of reckoning arrived and I was not prepared.
I try not to analyze the little details of a dream when I do this, because they seem random at best and derivative if I try to assign them too much meaning. I don't know why I had this specific dream last night, as I hadn't been contemplating my musical career yesterday or lack of practice. But I suppose my mind subconsciously was aware of my lacking, and let me know last night in the form of a dream.
This morning when I woke up I had an overwhelming sense of paranoia. The noise from the hallway, which I usually recognize immediately as the air conditioning unit, sounded like someone in my apartment. I thought to myself, I didn't lock the door last night. More sounds from the living room. The way the people in the dream acted at the end when they realized I wasn't on stage, it was almost like they were coming after me for my blood, they were so furious. And when I woke up I was left with that sense of paranoia, until I got up, heard the alarm going off on my phone and realized I had woken up delightfully early.
Why did I begin the title of this article with 'Managing Disappointment?' Yesterday was a disappointing step back in my progress. I achieved nothing of my actual goals. I went shopping last night with my friend, and now have a good amount of food in my kitchen. Easily constructed things too, so as to not give me an excuse to leave. But no less, the last week of my life has given me a lot of reasons to be disappointed with myself. It would be too easy to let myself get caught up in that disappointment and fall into the same depression cycle that I've gone in and out of for the last few years. How do I manage that? How do I put that feeling where it belongs in my mindset? I'm ending this article with that open question because I don't have the answer. I think it's a crucial step in my growth that I'm going to have to figure out soon.
If you have any thoughts on that matter or on my dream, feel free to comment below.
