Okay, I said I was taking up the blog again, but it's been 9 months since I said that. But here I am again. Like a bad penny, right? Or a business card. You can never throw those things away, but then when you need to find a specific one... it's never findable.
Today I'm posting about dreams. I've been keeping a record of my dreams since I was about 13. Not ALL of them, of course, that would be tedious. (Actually, probably any record of my dreams is tedious, but I do it anyway.) I like to watch for themes. I used to dream about houses all the time: I was inheriting a wonderful old house, or I was living in a ramshackle house, or I discovered a whole new wing of my house with rooms after rooms after rooms. In one I was living in an old strip mall. Now that I own my very own house (yes, we did close and it's mine all mine now), I don't dream about houses as much. But I've been dreaming about old friends and old jobs.
Last night it was about old friends AND old jobs. I often dream about my time working at the Arts Institute, perhaps because it was such an all-encompassing job. I spent literally six weeks working 15-hour days every fall and three weeks working around the clock every summer, plus all the months leading up to both those programs, hiring faculty, ordering supplies, and overseeing the move of all that stuff to the site. It's been almost 20 years since I had that job, yet I still dream about it: either that I've been asked to come back, or that I'm suddenly back in the job and trying to figure out how things are run.
I dreamed that I met certain people who were my friends at the Institute, and discovered that they didn't actually like me. In fact, they reviled me. And I was heartbroken. And then I was angry. And I thought about doing something really dastardly. But then when I was handed some responsibility for the organization (moving parts of a sculpture from point a to point b, if I recall), I dutifully did what I was supposed to do, even though I was thinking of all the things I could do: pushing the stuff down the stairs or something. But I didn't. I just swallowed my pride, moved the stuff I needed to move, and the slipped out the door.
This reminded me of how I felt when I was there. I was good at my job, but I never belonged there. I was never part of that social strata, if you will. Art is always surrounded by money. And I didn't come from money or the social set who had it. No matter what I did, or how good I was, I would never wear the right clothes or eat at the right restaurants or know the right people or value the right things to make me belong there. It didn't matter what I could do. It only mattered who I was. Or what I was, perhaps. And though I had what I thought were real friends then, I knew that if they were having a dinner party, I wouldn't be invited. I just wasn't the right sort of person.
It preyed on me for a while, but I came to deal with it. And one of the things that helped was when I applied for a leadership position there and didn't get it. I knew it was, in large part, because of this class thing. And I was hurt. But my friend came to me and she said "Linda: you are a wonderful person. You're not like anyone else I know. Everyone who meets you loves you, you affect people's lives. Don't worry about what those people at the Arts Institute think. you shouldn't try to be like them. Just be you."
Of course, she was one of the ones who wasn't inviting me to dinner parties. But I still considered her a friend. I think now that in a different way, she also struggled with that gap between worlds. She came from the upper crust: the right clothes and wines, the right social circles, the right social graces. She could visit my world, and I could visit hers, but neither of us belonged there. She married money. I changed jobs and went my merry way and that was the end of the friendship. But what she said did help, at the time. And I believe she was sincere. I think she was telling me it was okay for me not to belong there.
I think all my life I've been looking for that niche where I truly do belong. I have found a few places I like, places I'd like to belong, places I nearly belong, places I belong for a while and then don't anymore... but never a full fit. Maybe that's my niche: nearly belonging.
This morning, after that dream, I thought about these things. Seems I'm always trying to figure out what I should do to perfectly suit or embrace or express who I am. I think I'm seeking some sort of consistency. As if anyone was consistent.
