Last night I had a dream which had as a key component references to the process of sintering. This is not something I normally think about, and I had to look it up. Turns out that it's a method for making things from powder, using heat to cause the powder particles to bind to each other.
My dream didn't have it quite right, as there my job was to determine if a particular piece of steel should be ordered 'sintered' or 'powdered'. I had this job because the small company that I'd worked for, composed of people who did what they thought needed to be done, as and when they thought it should be done, had been purchased by a much larger organization, and the members of the smaller company had been scattered through the large one. The purpose was so that the members of the smaller one would learn how the large one worked, and also so that they would, through example, instruct the larger one in how to act creatively rather than by 'what the book says'.
Didn't work quite that way. By the end of the first day, I was hopelessly at sea, with no idea of what people were asking me or what they wanted from me. At five thirteen PM, when they all leapt up and began putting on their coats, I felt, smugly, that I wasn't a 'wage slave' and would not bail out exactly on the stroke of five fifteen, as they did -- yet two minutes later I found myself putting on my coat, too, and joining the tail end of the mob.
Another strange thing: I learned at the end of that first day that every day you were supposed to pick up a long white pole. As you did things during the day, you got to have the pole cut down, so that when it was time to leave, you could demonstrate that you had worked by the fact that your pole was minescule. Although, come to think of it, it also meant that you did what you were supposed to do, but no more.
I don't think that dreams have 'messages', but if this one did, I think it was kind of about how people in large stodgy organizations -- like mine? -- really do know what they're doing, even if just at the collective level, and knowing your little bit may be all you get to know. And that somethings initiative isn't a good thing.
It was a very strange dream.
6 comments:
How come you dream about my company huh?
The being at sea in a strange job is a common dream...interesting how your natural intelligence and ceativity made it all work out.
I love the pole method. i DID work at a place once which monitored your progress by the pile of scrap in the bin....it seemed to better reflect that we had been working hard than looking at the finished products....
I'll have to remember the pole. You don't suppose it is equivelent to my dream about a piece of chalk which keeps wearing down so fast that I despaired of ever getting the equation-idea onto the blackboard before I forgot it entirely?
This is a test to see if this post appears. If it does, then the lengthy one that I wrote earlier has in fact vanished into the aether.
Yup, sure did. Thanks, blogger.
Okay, let’s try this again.
First, I agree that the chalk and the pole are related. No doubt about it. Some ‘baggage’ imagery in there, too, I should think.
Second, the dream is not something that I’d bet my life on, but in a general way I think that it’s me reminding myself of how much I dislike structured environments populated with responsible people acting in accordance with established procedures and subject to rules, regulations, guidelines, standards, and the whims of auditors. How much I want to escape them.
My. Just writing that caused me to become slightly agitated.
But there is hope.
We’ve saved enough money that we could be considered moderately well-to-do. Three weeks ago, I became vested in my company’s retirement plan which we anticipate will be enough to fund one week’s groceries each month for the rest of our lives. Given some conservative financial assumptions, we have enough money now that I could probably retire today and never work again. If I were to work for another two or so years, that would become virtually certain. Ceteri paribus, of course.
I don’t know what I’d do in retirement. I’d like to keep working, but with a different definition of what ‘work’ is, and what ‘success’ is. I want to be smart, and seen as smart; I want to be valued, and valuable. I want to be with bright people, and both contribute to what they are doing and be appreciated by them.
I don’t think that last will happen, partially because I have no image of how it COULD happen, and mostly because I don’t believe in it. Its just a nice image, like being thinner or having the full use of my shoulder again. Make it happen? Doubtful.
But I have the chance to try. I think my brain is telling me not to pass it up.
Hi Bill, hi Stag,
There are some strong archetypal images in the dreams - and I just happen to be reading in that area at the moment. Only you can interpret the images in your dreams, but I offer you this to consider as you ruminate further.
Often a pole, or staff, or tree, represents growth toward wholeness or integration. Work is chopping your pole into a tiny stub every day! But every day, you get a new one.
Stag, I haven't read your dream but I'd be interested to do so. Chalk is a mineral or stone which can represent the complete self, too. The chalk is wearing out when you use it to make abstract, intellectual stuff. Did you try drawing pictures on the sidewalk like a kid?
Just some thoughts as we head into a new year - all the best to both of you for 2006,
Joanna
I don't tend to beleive that dreams can be interpreted, but I have to admit that your explanations make sense to me.
I hope that you both have a new year that's filled with warmth and with delight.
I dunno Jo Jo, for all I know it could be my looming 50th birthday, and or my love life. Or a bit of undigested beef....(to quote Dickens).
My recurring dream is that I know the answer (to what...I can never remember) and it has to be put up on the blackboard so that I can stand back and study it. The chalk wears away halfway through the job, and I am struggling to make do with tiny bits and pieces of chalk.
the mineral doesn't seem to be the thing....I have had the same dream with soap on a window...but the rain keeps washing it away.
fun stuff....probably meaningless.
Happy New Year Bill....if you are happy in job, stick with it!
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