Dreams and Me

I had a bad dream last night that woke me up. Usually, I don't remember dreams and they rarely seem to communicate anything significant to me, but I remembered it when I woke up at 4:30 this morning briefly. I can't really recall details, but my dad was working in some sort of tall office building (not his real life job) and I was there (don't know why). Well we ended up having to hide in his office from some sort of attacker. The power was out or the lights were off and the "attacker" was still able to find us and busted through his glass window. For some reason, I think that it was night and I kept wondering why we didn't leave the building instead of hiding...

The other night, I dreamed that my sister and I were in a car with the windows up, it was raining and dark out. A young neighbor girl with long hair was outside knocking on the car window and I wondered why she was outside this late, especially in the rain.

So, from what I can tell in both of these, I seem to be feeling trapped and someone else is trying to get in...and it's always nighttime and dark... why did these two contain family members, I rarely put them in my dreams?

You'd think I've been feeling down, but I really haven't been. I'm actually on quite the upswing lately, even though the career-issue is not anywhere near solved yet. I noticed something about myself at last week's workshops I previously posted about: I prefer the one-on-one, more detail-oriented, day-to-day interactions than the "top," political, networking, "policy-making" types of work. I'm not sure how to explain it - like I'd rather be a carpenter than a general contractor...or a counselor/therapist vs. mayor of a city...deeper rather than broader. Ding ding!

Perfect Attendance

I work in Government. Local, fairly progressive, but government nonetheless. Today concluded two half days of "Sustainable Workplace Action Plan Workshops" where over 100 "Supervisors and Managers" came together to address issues within our "Organizational Culture." Mainly we wish to move from "top down," administrative, procedure based culture, to a more creative, integrative, values-aligned, and open one. The County manager hired a consultant, from New Zealand, to survey staff (the survey tool was not extremely well-accepted, since no one could input comments or skip questions that they didn't feel they could answer - can we say invalid?) and put together this workshop to help us improve things such as inter-department collaboration and information sharing, employee development and recognition, blah blah blah. Florida property taxes are being reduced (it's to be on the ballot in January, but it's pretty much a guarantee, right?) and we need to conserve revenue, so first we go hire a consultant from overseas, fly him here for several days, put him up in a nice hotel, rent a banquet hall, etc. etc. to generate ideas that, in my opinion, we could have come up with one mass email to all employees simply asking for their opinions and ideas. Oh, but there was popcorn and water yesterday and coffee and cookies today, so obviously they didn't want to "overspend."

OK, so my group worked on employee recognition and development. We had grand ideas of formal mentoring programs, better supervisory training, etc. etc. All great, and all within reach.
Now for the ironic twist: We currently have one annual Recognition luncheon for all employees, in which people are recognized for length of service, "good driving," and...drum roll please, "Perfect attendance." Well, I have always held the opinion that we should not be rewarded/recognized for never using annual or sick leave because this is not "aligned" with our values, since employees who stay home when ill and take vacations from time to time are far more productive (studies show...) than those who are miraculously able to stay perfectly well and never take off. Anyway, I mentioned this in the group, and our Administrative Manager (a very high level person in the County) agreed with me on this, then said that she tried to do away with it a few years ago, but there was such strong backlash from employees (because the reward is an extra day of leave- that they will never use I presume) that they didn't go forward with it. And then the subject was changed...

And they wonder why real change doesn't happen.