Cafe Hitch-hike

2023-07-18

Stealing time

Today, I am stealing time. I called in sick although I was fine, but I had some interesting dreams...

...I dreamed I was in ELTown, where I went to college. It was dusk, and I was there for a lecture that had wrapped up. Walked to my vehicle and thought about the best way to get to where I was staying, like which roads to take because there were multiple ways. One way, I realized, would had taken me to My Buddy Steve's office (an older college friend/ mentor). I decided to take another way which would had taken me to the house of my old roommate The Grouchy Hippie.

I went to GH's house, and it was full of stuff and a few men lived there. They were nice and glad to have me, but the house was a complete dive with mold on the wall from the leaky roof. People were coming in because an event was taking place, like an open mic night and the house started to get crowded. I walked into the kitchen to make myself a drink, and my picture was on a shelf along with pictures and art by others, and I quietly smiled (I lived there in 1999).

I ran into my colleague, The Coastie (a former US Coast Guard member), and he was pretty excited to be there and we chatted a bit. I was surprised to see him but he said he didn't want to miss it.

I then went into the basement, where GH slept but became a makeshift performance hall, and listened to people perform with a range of topics. A performer showed clips from a documentary about an immense betrayal (a sport team killed a few of its members in cold blood), another sang a song of love and longing that everyone started to sing with all of their heart, especially me. One recited a poem in Portuguese; the language sounded so pretty that maybe people were just enjoying the sound of the poet's voice, hahah (there's not many speaker in that region at all). I made myself another drink, and then went outside which was the nearby field I used to hike when I lived there (although it was a mile away) except it was right outside. The field now had people living there who made hasty fences, and a guy gave me a glare because I didn't realize I was on his property, so I turned around.

Afterward, I was in a lobby and I had seen M. from my retreat in the Netherlands in 2019. Ooh, it was so nice to see him! He was tall, had thick, wavy, light brown hair with sun-bleached tips, blue eyes, and a nice smile. He spoke a little English to me and we had a warm conversation where we caught up with each other.

The first dream was another type of going "home" again but looking at it with different eyes and from further ahead in time. I didn't feel bad being there at all, but in real life, GH died from heart issues in 2019 at the age of 76. I was in touch with his sister around that time to ask what had happened. He had 3 male roommates who sounded like street people with some sort of state assistance where they could rent his rooms. They had been there for a few years, and they asked the sister if they could buy it. She may had given it to them because she lived hundreds of miles away and never went to the area. She said she didn't need the house as an asset or want the hassle of selling it.

After I woke up, my body and brain was immensely happy for taking the time off. I needed a day to do nothing. God knows my evenings and weekends are always consumed with something, almost like having children around. I will always have pending work for Professor Insano. I must be equally insano to want to take his labor class in the fall, but I really, really need to learn about that labor law shit for the temp position I'm about to take. I understand I'll be walking into (at least) 1 contentious, lingering labor issue (*whines a little inside, 'why me?'*).

But, I realized my soon-to-be former boss sees me like the Vanilla Ice of the building: 'if you got a problem, yo, I'll solve it.' True, I solved some puzzles and even one that no one was aware of. I'm really gonna have to Ice-Ice Baby this!

It also takes a lot of energy to compose my thoughts and my everything for this. I embrace the advice of my former mentor who said to not to try to control everything, yet there's nothing wrong with prepping my mindset regardless of this being a temp thing, it is in fact a big change. I embrace the opportunity this presents despite my fears. I also see this is a time to, well, apply what I've learned throughout my career while knowing there's a huge difference between theory and what's in books with what really happens (and what people really do).

I figure I'll have to surprise the hell out of one group I'll supervise. I'm younger than most of them, and my spidey senses tell me they will take advantage of that along with my apparent inexperience in their department. Well, I surprised my boss and their right hand person with some questions that I asked to confirm some things I wondered about. With that, I realized my job will go beyond making sure a certain department doesn't kill each other, keeping others on task, and going to grand pubah (my term for 'big boss' or VIP) meetings, even if mine is a temporary one.

'Temporary.' The term is a year, and let's just see if it's that long.

But yes, all of the above takes a lot of energy. Then, I'll take my own advice I had when I took my current job: I told myself to give 5 to 20% change of uncertainty (and then came a pandemic). We really can't anticipate every single unexpected event, but really only minimize things from happening and being able to function also at a minimal level (they call that emergency management).

I learned a new word: polycrisis. It came from a fine lady I know who works for an international organization. It reminds me of when I introduced the word dystopia to Donnie 3 years ago. I looked up the new word online, and many major international insurance agencies and NGOs had blog posts and reports on that. What made me cringe was one of the reports, by one of the world's most powerful economic forums, concluded the polycrisis was going to affect economic growth, and I thought, Growth, wtf? So issues like places being uninhabitable, climate events, and mass displacement of people are problems because they get in the way of economic growth and may cost businesses and governments lots of money? That's their big gripe? Well viva economic liberalism and capitalism.

Sorry, I had to throw that in. We've been burning here in Florida on multiple levels, and next comes the active part of our storm season. No one talks about last year's Hurricane Ian, but I've heard a consistent muttering about how our region has dodged storms like that for an unusually long time.

Well, it's easy for me to make grad school and my incoming temp position to take all my attention, but things like this put it in perspective. Also, the sentencing for my niece's death will be taking place sometime between this August and August 2060 (slight exaggeration); the dates keep getting changed and she was killed almost 4 years ago. The defendant in this case got new attorneys, so that's pushed things later, but he apparently will take a plea bargain where he won't get a trial (and we will be spared an agonizing trial where details of her troubled life and violent death will be recited in a courtroom). I can look at the image of the Milky Way galaxy and scenarios like these to say... there are much bigger things in life.

downwind | upstream