An annoying recurring dream

Given that another blogger wrote a post about having an unpleasant dream about something that soon afterward happened in her real life, I thought I'd write a few posts about dreams. And seeing that one of my dreams has to do with yesterday's post, I might as well start there.

I seem to have some version of this dream often. It feels very real, but I don't think that it has actually happened yet.

So I get to a point where I mostly have a clean house and most of my stuff is almost organized. And I think that this is about as good as I'm going to get things, and the rest of the stuff I need to do might eventually get done if I'd just work on it a little bit everyday and stick to it. And it's not Christmas or anything like that, and I don't have school, and I don't have anything that I'm just dying to do. So I might as well get a job.

So after nothing comes along that looks like it would really make money, I end up taking some dumb job like I've already had. Like maybe I go work at a movie theater. You cannot pay the bills on what you make at a movie theater, but if you've got nothing better to do and would just like some extra money you might as well look into working at a movie theater. And it comes with free soda, free popcorn, and free movies. You can watch all of the movies that play at your theater for free, and you can probably make arrangements to see the other movies for free at some other theater.

So I take the job, and then I remember why I didn't want this job. The hours suck, and I'm tired, and I'm seeing most of these free movies by myself cause most of my friends have a regular Monday thru Friday nine to five job and I don't. And when my friends are out doing cool stuff for the weekend, I'm stuck working at the theater.

And I'm not a teenager anymore, and I don't like being on my feet all day. And I'm tired. I'm tired all of the time. And when I have the evening shift I sit at home all day waiting for it to be time to go to work, because if I tried to do anything fun or anything useful before work, then that would make me so tired that I would be tempted to not even go into work.

And then one day I'm more than just tired. I think that I'm getting a bad cold or something, and that if I don't feel better the next day I will have to call in sick. So the next day I call and tell them that I won't be coming in and so forth. And the day after that is the same.

Now when you call in sick, the idea is to stay in bed and rest and get better. Except that when you finally do get to where you relax enough to almost fall asleep, you remember that you can't fall asleep because you have to call work at a reasonable time to talk to the manager and tell him that you're sick and can't come in. So after a couple of days when it looks like you're going to be sick for a while, you just ask to go ahead and be taken off the schedule for the rest of the week, and you might as well be left off of next week's schedule too.

So I talk to the manager and he's not going to put me back on the schedule until I call back and tell him that I'm feeling better. Great. Now maybe I can get some rest.

So a few days or maybe a week goes by, and I feel better. And I think that since I'm not on the schedule for the rest of the week, that I might as well just not call in yet and take a few more days to get caught up with stuff that didn't get done while I was sick, like washing dishes and laundry and stuff like that.

And then something comes up, and I think that I might as well not go back to work just yet. I could deal with some stuff and go back to work later.

And one thing after another comes up, so that I get so busy for a bit that I've all but forgotten that I have this silly job to go to. And I put that out of my mind and think that they're always hiring new people, and if they were short handed they've probably hired someone else anyway. If they needed me, they'd call.

And a few weeks go by before I get everything back to normal. And then I'm thinking how it would be nice to have some money, and I should start looking for a job again. And then I remember that I already got a job, but I haven't been to it in so long that they either assumed that I quit or I've been fired.

But I haven't spoken to anyone at the theater, so I don't really know. In theory, I could just go and talk to the manager and tell him if there's any shifts available he can put me back on the schedule. And I've probably got a paycheck or two waiting for me in the office. All I have to do is go over there and talk to the guy.

But I'm just so embarrassed about my long absence that I can't seem to do it. I'd rather go through the whole process of looking for another one of these dumb jobs than to just go back to the first job and deal with it. I'm so embarrassed about the whole thing that I'd rather just give up the paychecks I've already earned than to go over there and ask for them.