Awake at night in Allentown. Again.

Once again, my subconscious is alive and well.

I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night because like a number of people I know, I find myself startled awake by some idea or situation that simply will not leave my mind and as a result, I can’t fall back to sleep.

Since I slept poorly last night, I felt very tired by about 3 pm and tried to take a nap this afternoon. It was mostly pointless for quite a while and then I fell asleep. You know how I know? My dream.

I’m not going into every detail here – you’re welcome – but the highlights include the following:

I had a new boss at my current company: Barack Obama.

After several delays, he and I had a meeting in an enormous unfamiliar, conference room.

He handed over sheets and sheets and sheets of legal pad pages, all containing notes and figures. Nothing more formal than that – no reports, charts, or presentations.

He went on to tell me that my sales of $14,000 (I’ve not been in a true sales position for many years) were inadequate. I told him that figure wasn’t correct; that it was significantly higher but he didn’t seem to hear me.

Bottom line: I lost my job.

I’m still not a big believer in dreams but here’s what I learned from Dream Moods: Your Dream Symbol Interpretation.

To see a stack of papers in your dream, denotes lots of stress and lots of responsibilities. And surprise - I'm not handling it well.

To dream that you lose your job, represents instability and insecurity in your waking life.

Fired: to dream that you are fired from your job apparently has nothing to do with your career. It's a symbol of something else and a desire to end it. As a bonus, I"m "supressing" what I really want out of life.

I'm just a party waiting to happen, right?

To all this may I simply say: no kidding. Suffice it to say, life is more than a little challenging these days for many, many reasons. Working on it with limited success but I’m trying. Not one bit of it is welcome or easy. Despite my glacial efforts to make positive change, it would seem that even when I‘m sleeping, I can’t seem to find any relief.

I’m kind of tired of using the OTC sleep aids, which are not really a solution. So if anyone has any ideas about overcoming this nighttime wakefulness – ideas that really work – I’m listening.