#5 Baptism

Questions about worth, work, and renewal

I used to have a recurring office work dream where I was learning a new skill, so I asked not to be paid. In my dream, it was meant to be temporary, but years passed where I’d labored for nothing, and everyone else had forgotten my special arrangement.

Then, I dreamt about asking finally asking for pay. The no-pay dream stopped, but my dreams are continuous, so in every work dream, I remember having worked for years without pay and feel stupid and ashamed all over again.

I thought it was about the lack of money in writing, but now I wonder if it’s about the non-monetary credit I’d refused to give myself.

I was in that universe again, last night. It was my job to wash words off of papers to make them clean and usable again and burn the unwashable ones. A baptism for words? A writing rebirth?