These dreams go on when I close my eyes. Stop them, please.

I just had a dream. There I was, sleeping and minding my own business, when this disturbing dream came out of the recesses of my cluttered little mind and clobbered me with a punch that rendered me sleepless.

In my dream quit my job to be, of all things, a photographer.

I did it in quite a spectacular way, for mild, meek, little me–I walked into the principal’s office at the end of the day, told him I was resigning and walked back out. In the middle of the year. Let me repeat that: IN THE MIDDLE OF THE YEAR.

Unless they’re ill and can’t come back to work, no teacher quits in the middle of the year. I’ve seen it happen only twice in my career of twelve years: once, when a first-year teacher walked out after her first day of teaching and quietly slipped back into her job at at store that catered to the homebrewing crowd and then again this year, when a teacher retired at semester after giving several month’s notice. That’s all.

People just don’t quit with no notice in the middle of the year–you’ll get blacklisted for the rest of your life.

I spent about two days wandering around, missing teaching and noticing how things just weren’t working well at school now that I’d left, so I ended up going back to ask for my job back (at a lower wage, of course) while the principal was interviewing several candidates.

Each looked like something that had to be scraped out of an 80’s bar after closing time. (One looked suspiciously like an old high school “friend” of mine who used to cut little pieces of her hair if it didn’t fit into a barrette smoothly enough. She had sprouted dark facial hair under her chin that was noticeable from across the conference room.  She smelled like she’d bathed in cigarette smoke-infused water.)

I popped my head in, told him I was sorry but, ” You know how sometimes you just need to try something new before you understood what you already had? That’s what I did, and I want to come back.”

That and, “Pretty please, I’d really like to have my job back. A decrease in salary would be fine.”

He hesitated, said, “No, I don’t know what you mean,” turned and started interviewing the foul-smelling candidate with fur growing out from under her chin.

That woke me up and I haven’t been able to sleep since.

Apparently, my subconscious is trying to keep me in line. You’d think I might be able to dream about success, but instead I’m dreaming about groveling for my job after leave to pursue a dream. Sad, huh?