[jyl]

I have had a recurring dream for decades now - so often that sometimes I actually think it happened.

Basically my dream is that at some point after leaving law, I went back to my old law firm and worked as an “of counsel” for a couple years, to pay the bills while I was getting my business degree or looking for a finance job or something. I think the gist of the dream is that I’m back in a place where I used to be “somebody”, an up-and-coming partner, in the thick of the action, but now I’m an increasingly anonymous worker bee, just going to my little office and doing routine work for a paycheck, with fewer people who know me, as my former peers have moved up and the new associates just see me as the quiet, dependable, kind of anonymous, journeyman guy. Which is kind of how we viewed “of counsels” back then, actually. I’ll wake up from these dreams and struggle to remember when I was “of counsel”, and then my wife will tell me it never happened. I think the dream reflects my fears of getting old and of failure. That’s my psycho-dream-analysis, anyway.

Actually I left and never looked back, didn’t keep in touch with any of my former partners and associates, moved on to the next thing. I did find the long-dormant connection useful last year, when I needed a lawyer in Taiwan to handle my mom’s estate, and my old firm’s Taiwan office found me someone with the necessary specialization. Occasionally I get the firm’s “alumni” e-newsletter, which I don’t read. I think many of the older partners I worked with are passed now, and some of my former peers have died young, which is an occupational hazard for lawyers, or themselves quit the law. Maybe an alternate dream-analysis is along the lines of “you can’t go home again”.

I’ve never stayed in touch with “work friends” when leaving a school or a job or a career. The kind of lifelong networking that some people do, as they move from company to company, role to role, is foreign to me. Maybe my dream has something to do with that.

Anyone have this kind of recurring dream? Not a stress/anxiety dream - finding yourself pants-free or unprepared - but something more insidious?