10:43 PM - 13.09.04
Dreams and Nightmares.
My cell phone started ringing while I was standing at the bus stop this morning - 6:30 in the am. I looked at the call display and realized it must be another Returning Officer calling. The reception was so bad that I couldn't hear a voice at all, so I surmised that it must be someone out of town. Deal with it when I get to work, since I had no alternatives at that point with the bus pulling up to the curb. Got on the train and found one fellow in a state of despair. An older guy long of locks - unwashed. He had his electric guitar and amplifiers lovingly encased in the best leather covers grouped around him on the seat and bench across from him. Head down, eyes covered, tears evident along the cheek bone - not a happy start to the morning to see someone else mourning the loss of something obviously.
Was getting up to detrain when I spotted a woman I had volunteered with on some of the family support issues. She works in the same industry as me, but in finance. I waited for her to catch me up then we compared notes, since the last time we saw each other. She still lives with her hubby who is an abusive alcoholic by choice. She goes to all sorts of self improvement courses and I suppose if that works for her I shouldn't have any opinion other than to respect her choice. I just don't understand why she continues to accept the degree of abuse she receives when she has so much going for her and so much to offer - even if just to herself as a single person. Why waste so much energy on a person whose sole purpose seems to be to beat her down. Must be that I'm supposed to receive a lesson somehow though, because I've run into a couple of Moms who have dealt with similar challenges each in different ways over the past decade. One, in fact, hadn't talked with me since the time when my marriage was imploding. Anyway, I took a few extra minutes to spend with my friend before going in to work. Meant I was a bit late, but friends are more important than that aren't they?
Started in to scan again this morning, but once the brother arrived I found that I was booted off the only work station that allows me to do the work I was contracted for. It is the brother who has the critical deadline to meet, so I can't really insist on going forward with my tasks when it would be obstructive to his. My station is supposed to be functional so that I can work there, but it almost seems to me that the last thing that is wanted is for me to do what I was recruited to do. Today I wasn't even allowed to work on the technical aspects - it was all just sorting and filing. More resumes going out I think, I'm tired of the game whoever is playing.
In addition, my supervisor hasn't called me - meaning I guess no progress in negotiations. To top it off, I think I saw one of the really vicious women who supervised me about a year and a half ago emerging from one of the floors that is being taken over by this company as they takeover another company. Maybe that is the lesson I need to learn from the encounter with my friend this morning. Don't stay in a situation where the most salient feature of it is abuse - even when it is presented as "I'm doing this because I love you" Right - I don't need or want any part of such "love".
At the end of the day, the co-ordinator came by. Her comment was to the effect that the last two weeks had been hard on everyone because of the merger and that we all probably were feeling overwhelmed because of that and the global situation, highlighted by the massacre of innocents in Russia. She seemed to be referring to my communication with my supervisor last week about quitting this contract. The other part of the lesson kicked in.
Whenever someone diminishes or dismisses one's concerns, making it so that they aren't acknowledged, let alone addressed, then it is time to move on. Firstly, checking back in my posts to you, dear diary, I made my concerns about going back to this employer clear before I even started. I only agreed because I trust my supervisor's judgement and feel obligated to try some thing when he asks, because he has gone to bat for me so often - last week being the latest example. By August 8, when I was almost smashed in the rolling files twice in one day, and in the week I had two fairly violent allergic reactions in a row - I think my concerns are justified about my safety on site.
As for the international conditions being the cause of my stress. Well let's see then. Massacres - Rwanda, Bosnia, Indonesia, the Sudan, the Middle East. Over the past two decades, when hasn't there been acts of calculated genocide and atrocities going on some of them eclipsing the death toll - horrible and unacceptable as it is in the last event - by hundreds of times. Maybe it is the first time the co-ordinator has been aware that there is evil ranging freely in several parts of the world, but I've been aware and as active as I am able to be in at least asking to have it addressed or doing something to help those caught in the path of the dogs of war for a few decades. Yes, it upsets me a great deal - each incident - but it certainly isn't why I'm as upset about work as I am. Evil takes on many guises doesn't it dear diary? Even in one's own family sometimes, as the lesson from the Mom I met this morning bears witness.
Weird tonight was when I went back to my dream log to see if I couldn't find one of the ones that seems to have been pre-cognitive. One of my posts to you sometime this year talked about floods and collapsing infrastructure in a Carribean island. Given the reports from the past few days I think I will hear a bit more about the dream in the next days. What was disconcerting was to be reading several dreams from less than a year ago that appear to be showing current conditions for either me or for some of my friends. Given that my current crop of dream fragments are mostly nightmarish and almost impossible to recall upon waking - because maybe I don't want to - I am feeling a bit concerned. Some also seem to be replaying with slight variations on the themes from last year. There have been several lately that deal with the Arctic and my cousins - my Dad's nephews - and I spending time together working up there as a team. Part of that might have been triggered by my last contract, that has some connection in a wry sort of way. Don't know.
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