I’ve had very few nightmares in my life.  When I go to bed at night, I have nothing to fear when I close my eyes to sleep.  I often look forward to my dreams and typically have several every night.  After waking up from these dreams, I only remember small bits and pieces, and I particularly enjoy trying to rejoin a dream that was interrupted by a trip to the bathroom, for example.  It makes me laugh when I think of some of the creativity that goes into my dreams.  My wife finds it disturbing that I often times dream about work, even in retirement, and of school that hasn’t happened for 45 years.  She thought that writing about it might help me move on, although I don’t find them as disturbing as she does.

I was telling her about my work-related dream the other night.  She thought it was amusing that I somehow combined elements of past work situations with a recent outdoor adventure.  I was in the media business for many years, and did sales and management work for radio and television stations that relied on advertising to drive profits.  Often times, we worked with advertising agencies that bought our air time for their clients.  My wife worked for one of these agencies at one time, but now sits on the other side of the desk.  It was her agency that was the focus of my dream.  A former boss was reassigning accounts, and this particular agency was involved in a shuffle that would dramatically affect my income.  I went to see them to inform them of our plans, and to see how I might be of help in the transition.

Most sizable advertising agencies are in big cities and housed in towering skyscrapers.  Madison Avenue is the hub of the advertising business, just as Wall Street is to finance.  If you’re familiar with the television series Mad Men, then you know that Mad is short for Madison Avenue, and that it once was a man’s world.  Jon Hamm starred as Don Draper, who was initially the Creative Director for the agency Sterling Cooper.  The Ad World in his day was  a high-fashion, male-dominated, cut-throat business that designed and placed ad campaigns for companies seeking top of mind awareness with consumers.  While the business is still very competitive, it is now primarily female-driven, without the cigar and martini image of yesteryear.  However, that is hardly how I envisioned it in my dream.

The agency I went to call on was in a campground.  It was still housed in the largest tents, but on hiking trails rather than Madison Avenue.  As I recall, it was situated on a hill, with the executive offices at the top of the hill, creative offices in the center, and the toilets at the bottom.  At least my planning was practical, because imagine what it would have been like if the toilets were on top.  We all know how any business works and that shit flows downhill.  I guess even a homebody like myself knows the basic rules of the campground.  In trying to interpret my dream, my wife thought I was suffering from some sort of mild post traumatic symptoms related to spending the night in a field during the recent Hood to Coast Relay, and an impromptu visit to Cabela’s  (See Post #241).  I also told her that I still dream of missing classes, forgetting to study for a test, and being late for class.

I don’t dream about being rich or winning the lottery.  However, I do tend to mix in a lot of toilet humor, since it’s a place that I often frequent between dreams.  I thought it was funny that I dreamed that one of our runners in the Hood to Coast Relay, was teaching me the basics of the race and pointed out all the Honey Buckets that he would stop to visit during the course of the race.  It was even funnier when he told me that he actually did stop on the last leg of his run, making my dream come true.  I guess I should have wished for more, because sometimes dreams do come true.  I doubt, however, that I will be going back to school in the near future, or be making any business calls at a campground.  I do, however, have to use the toilet again!