Last week I finally found out my test date for the licensing exam I need to take before I can start working. Considering it a followed a scare in which I mistakenly thought for a few hours that my unemployment benefits had been prematurely cut off (and for some people out there this has happened and I feel for them) I was quite relieved. I'd been expecting it to be in June and had set my head on the idea that I'd be working for sure by the end of June.
Last night I had my first anxiety dream. Not about the test, surprisingly, but about working in a salon. The dream, in fact, was not "bad" in the sense that anything went wrong -it was a dream about giving a haircut, that's all. But for some reason, up until now, when I've given a haircut I've felt somehow protected by my status as a novice/student. I realized that in a few short weeks I'll be a "professional" and that's that.
I woke up from the dream, actually was woken by my dog who's been asking to go out in the wee hours lately, and had a million revelations about school and why I'm glad it's over. The dream wasn't the intense kind that completely saturate your senses. It was murky and dim and dark and vague, but the anxiety was the intense kind that completely saturates your senses and it was hard to shake off.
This morning when I woke up feeling the way you feel after a night like that and additionally feeling like my life is moving too slow and I'm still losing time to all this waiting. And then I suddenly remembered some bits of last spring when I started this whole transition. And I remembered that this is me starting my entire life over again. It's easy to forget when it takes so long. It's easy to become complacent when all I seem able to do is wait and roll with the occasional wave of progress, which come very slowly and so far apart. If things were moving faster I might feel overwhelmed and crazed but at least I'd see the progress and feel like I was getting somewhere. But suddenly they are moving faster (which I think is what was promised by astrologers at this beginning of the year -the first half might go slow but we'd hit June and it would all pick up -or was that supposed to be last year?) and I can see development in sight. I remembered too that I could have just gotten another job, not a career, a job. A job that probably would have made me miserable right from the start, which wouldn't have provided me with any kind of future or even enough income to support myself properly for the first few years. This may be a struggle in many ways, and there's no question I'm starting from scratch but it's got more potential for happiness and success than anything else I can think of and once again I'm happy that I went this way despite the waiting and the uncertainty. When you're doing what's right for yourself everything works out better than you could have expected and I know it's all about to start working out better than I could have expected. Finally.