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December, 2020
17I'm in an industrial indoor setting. Some type of manufacturing process is going on. It is darker here than usual and/or it is the night shift. A number of male workers are around. They are for the most part relaxed, playful, boisterous, spontaneous, uninhibited, roughhousing together, even dancing a bit at times. The few supervisors or other leaders or specialists on hand seem to be easily in control, their roles unchallenged, well accepted. I am the exception. My job has something to do with industrial safety management, and I must get the workers and their supervisors to comply with a multitude of precise specifications about how to keep the working environment safe and these employees from injury. Some safety specialists can just do this and naturally attain the needed compliance, more or less, enough to be OK. In my case, though, there is a lot of self-doubt, and the men do not take me seriously, behaving as they would if I were not trying to get the safety measures followed. I am worried, frustrated, and also confused, unsure how to get the others motivated to follow safe guidelines. One of the old hands in safety management takes me aside and tells me I am just not suited for this type work, that it would be best if I find another job or career, one I'd like better and that would be more appropriate for my personality. I feel a failure. I know he is right but have no idea how to make such a switch and what endeavor to take up instead that would definitely suit me better. When I wake up, I am still feeling depressed, a failure, diffident.
[I am retired, have been for 19 years, so this is not a dream about my actual job, and when I was working it was mostly not in an industrial or manufacturing setting, though I did work for four years for the Dept. of the Army as a safety management specialist, a job for which I did not feel well suited, hence my leaving it and getting a masters degree in rehab. counseling. This, though, turned out to be work for which I also did not feel a genuine affinity. Perhaps the dream is about how I live my life now, or, one could say, how in that sense I make my living in everyday existence. It may simply be pointing out that the small-self identity or ego is not well suited for a day-in-day-out routine of dealing in the darker aspects of my personal reality, ones that for me include depression, diffidence, a sense of failure, being too meticulous (precise), fruitlessly attempting to play it safe, worry, frustration, and confusion, all of which naturally means as well that I am not likely to be successful, as a role model or otherwise, in leading or motivating others. The question is how to change to a different kind of career, one I'd really like and that would both suit and serve me better. An answer may be there in the shadow characters portrayed in the dream, the male energy background aspects of me, ones generally not consciously acknowledged, who are boisterous, spontaneous, playful, relaxed, and uninhibited, unwilling to play it safe, even tending toward dancing, camaraderie, and fun. How then to become more like them in my conscious persona? Possibly a question worth pondering.]
