I had a night of dreams. I think that the cats kept waking me up out of deep sleep so I spent more time in REM. Gracie curled up under my arm and Ollie slept on my legs. Max was restless and needed reassuring all night long.

It started with my reoccurring work anxiety dream. I was wearing a suit and tie and trying to find the coffee room and my desk. It was reminiscent of working at Lockheed Martin. I wound up lost on roads in Maryland, which is one of my common dream elements. I used to go to Washington DC quite a bit on business and I never did find a good way into downtown DC. I was riding a bicycle on crowed highways, when I wound up in a glass and steel building. I’ve dreamed about this place before and it must have been some place where I’ve interviewed because I keep coming back to it, but I’ve never worked there.

The odd thing is that I wound up in a British Sci-Fi show reminiscent of Dr. Who. The show’s plot and premise where so detailed that at first I thought that I must actually be remembering something that I’d seen on TV.

I was in a group of six or seven people being led by a Doctor Who type character. There was a glowing ball of light that orbited the Earth once every hour or so. When it came around, all of the characters had to hold hands and the lighted ball transported them to a new reality. If you were not holding hands with the Doctor you were left behind. On each episode some people were left behind and new people were added. Each new world had a different challenge. I came aboard escaping from the job interview nightmare. I traveled once with the doctor to a world where everyone lives in cubicles and managed to escape the next time the ball appeared to a wooded glen where I was left behind chopping wood with my grandfather.

I woke up fully convinced that I had been dreaming an existing TV show, but soon realized that it was just part of the dream. I had ideas for a series of short stories using the concept before I completely woke up and realized that it was kind of dumb. The story was TV-ish, but not particularly interesting and I may have dreamed of the “Port Key” used in Potter stories (I am listening to the “goblet of fire” again) and a story (I can’t remember who wrote it) about a character that is switching realities in search of his own home world. The story influenced me when I was about 15 and I wrote a story with a similar premise back then. It is probably in one of my old notebooks and I should look for it.

Work anxiety is all too real, again. I am at work now, avoiding coding and trying not to think about all the things on my plate. Since several people have left my group and have not been replaced, I am doing my best to take up the slack. Some of the programmers are not producing much and I am working with them in self defense, trying to get them more productive.

I have several good story ideas partially finished, but I don’t have time to work on them. I am praying that my online money making schemes finally pay off, but I am far away from retiring.

I suppose I will be dreaming again tonight of traffic jams in Baltimore.