I’ve been having anxiety dreams so amazingly neurotic and anxious that I can’t even believe they’re mine. Quick synopses:

Anxiety Dream #1 (2 nights ago): I’m delivering a paper–the first chapter of my dissertation–to the Big Scary Colloquium (which I’ll be doing in real life, in March). In the dream, I need to actually present the paper (which I won’t have to do in real life). I begin reading it, clumsily, because apparently I haven’t read it before this point. But about half the pages are missing, and when I start to read out loud–ready?–yep, it’s not in English. It’s gibberish-on-a-page. StinkyCheese Guy gets up and walks out. As I’m stumbling my way through the nonsense syllables, I hear my advisor say, disbelievingly, “Wow.” I glance over to see him with his head buried in his hands.

Anxiety Dream #2 (last night): I’m meeting with FDR in his bedroom/office to sign some sort of document. He signs his part, pushes it over to me, then sniffs–making a face not unlike the one StinkyCheese Guy makes when he sees me–and says, “Excuse me, but are you not wearing shoes?” I look down to see that I am, in fact, barefoot. I say, “Uh, would you like me to put socks on?” He looks horrified and sends an aide to get me socks from the laundry. I go into the hallway to wait for the socks, so as not to further stink up his carpet, and ask GB (who has suddenly materialized), “That went okay, right? I handled that okay?”, to which GB responds, “Are you freaking *kidding*?” (Okay, that one was actually much more anxiety-producing than it sounds here.)

Yep. So. There you have it. Level with me, friends–am I cracking?

*GB’s comment, upon hearing–in far too much detail–about the dreams.