Just a Dream

I woke up in a cold sweat today. I had been dreaming about work and it was a nightmare. I’m sure this was prompted by a call from one of my ex-employees yesterday to see how I was doing.

I haven’t devoted more than 10 minutes to thinking about the old job since I retired in May. But last night I was in the hot seat. Part of my job description had been to deal with problems. And in my dream we had a big one. There was an error in one of the questions on the 2008 version of the questionnaire for our survey and they had already printed 2 million copies. I found myself quickly assessing the extent of the problem and coming up with alternative solutions. Meanwhile my head was starting to ache and that old familiar tension was taking hold.

Then I woke up and thanked God it was just a dream.

In truth, my ex-employee reported that all is going well. One person left for a promotion, but everyone else is still working hard. I’m happy to know that my leaving has not had a negative impact on the people or the project. It’s a useful survey and they are really a dedicated group of employees.

But I am somewhat relieved that when the inevitable problems do occur, they will not be mine to resolve!