Update

It's been a busy winter/spring around Chez212. I've been pursuing multiple career options -- photography, writing and acting -- all while managing a rookie softball team. To boot, I've decided I'm bored and want a job again, so I've been searching for that, too.

I had a dream in the early morning today that I'd like to share:

I was walking with a group of people in some ravine or valley. We needed to climb up to a plateau to get to where we needed to get. We had two choices: walk up the built-in stairway into the cliffside, or climb a fairly treacherous rock face about four or five hundred feet high.

We had already been on the plateau earlier before descending into the valley (there may have been a festival up there. That bit of the dream is really fuzzy.) We wanted to return.

I couldn't see my companions but perhaps six of us were walking.

Anyway, I started to climb the rock. It was a very smooth surface, like granite that time, water and wind had scrubbed smooth. Some footholds and handholds, enough to make the climb doable without lines or harnesses.

Now, I have a terrible fear of heights.

No, let me rephrase that: I have a terrible fear of falling from heights. But unusually for me, I climbed and kept climbing, even after I looked down and swallowed my fear hard.

I reached the top. Almost. I was literally a hand-hold away. I could reach out and grab a pinnacle, but the pinnacle crumbled in my grip. I reached for a hand-hold of granite, and the granite shuddered and fell away. I could almost grip the top, the plateau, my goal, but every time I tried, it fell away.

I slinked back down. As I began to make for the stairs, this being of slime and goop started to climb. He -- because I'm assuming -- climbed the same route I did, but faster and with more confidence.

When he reached the top, he didn't grab hold of anything, he leaped from the pinnacle to the cliff face and hoisted himself up. I woke.

Did you ever have a dream where, when you woke up, even though it was a metaphor and even though the imagery was completely irrelevant to your life, you knew exactly what it meant?

That was this dream. I get my message.