There was some rearranging at work due to space, and my former VP had put me in the middle of a long, school cafeteria-type table, with only one or two square feet of workspace. I was both trapped and cramped. I noticed one of the older partners from my old job at a workstation against the wall and commented that he must have fallen on harder times to be in the same situation as I was. He said, “It’s our age. This is what happens to you once you become what is considered ‘old'” [even though it isn’t at all “old”]. He turned his head, and I noticed that he was wearing a hearing aid in his left ear. I thought that that was it; we are old and stupid because we cannot hear.

I think half my anxieties must have manifested themselves in that short dream, about being trapped in the job with nowhere to go and no opportunities, and being considered too old and disabled for it by others, although not by me.