I've had a handful of dreams about work over this last year. Always, I'm trying to manage or direct, only to remember that I'm not in charge anymore. In the dreams, I usually laugh at myself for forgetting, grateful that someone else is responsible.

I had a similar experience with using and drinking dreams, knowing I was in the wrong place. I had vivid using dreams from the start (more then than now) but even with mere months of sobriety, my sleeping self knew that I shouldn't be doing what I was doing, with the understanding I'd need to change my clean date. In one, a friend said, after snorting a line of cocaine, "Oh, we all do it every once in a while." Thank goodness that wasn't true! I used to have cigarette dreams too, disappointed to find a lit smoke in my hand, upset that I'd have to try to quit again. 

The sleeping mind is a funny thing. I took a class once on dreams, and learned that if I want to remember the night's story, I should lay completely still as I awaken, and review the dream in my mind several times. Movement seems to send it into the ether, but I can often hang on to snippets, writing them down as soon as possible. Much of what I dream about is simply "Jeanine TV," but sometimes I'm visited by what Jung termed the Collective Unconscious, a message bigger than the usual fare. And, while I'm not particularly other-worldly, I do dream of my departed loved ones - my cousin on his birthday, laughing with my mom, my ex-boyfriend visiting on the day he died. I don't pretend, or need, to understand.

I had a conversation with a friend in New Mexico regarding health and self-care. In her fifties, she figured that if she lives until age 80, she has X number of months remaining. Talk about a perspective shift! Of course, we can't predict, but if I last as long as my mother (86) or beyond (my goal is a healthy 100) then I have anywhere from 234 to 260 months left. Whether two months or two hundred, there will be an end to this particular story. 

Annie Dillard said, "How we spend our days, is, of course, how we spend our lives." I can get caught up in the trip of "what would I do if this were my last day, or week?" but I'm realizing that this whole meaning-of-life thing isn't about the stuff of my days - the laundry, the coffee date, the grand adventure. It's whether I inhabit my days in a spirit of acceptance and gratitude, with curiosity, or a clenched fist and furrowed brow. Do I make healthy choices, for today and the tomorrows, or indulge myself like a child with the mental equivalent of candy and ice cream? I'm not denying the occasional check out (or dish of ice cream), but for me, it's important that I check out consciously rather than just moving through my days in a fog of "maybe later I'll..."

As Bonnie Raitt says, in "Nick of Time," "Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste." I don't stress about this stuff on a regular basis, but the questions of "have to" and "want to" come up more frequently. To that end, I broke up with my home group this week, or separated at least. I seem to be good for about a decade, then it's time to move on. Now that I don't need to cram meetings into weekends, I have more freedom to explore different options, seeing where I feel energized and engaged. And if I consistently wish I were elsewhere, related to meetings or otherwise, it is a good indicator of a need for change.

Where do your sleeping dreams take you? What about daydreams? What would you be doing if time and money were of no concern? When you look at your weeks with the gauge of have-to's and want-to's, how does it balance out overall?

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