Zzzzz...

All it took was a small seed to be planted in my subconscious. That's where the fear took root. That fear took hold and manifested itself in my dreams.

During my first week in the new job, I spent a lot of time being trained and discussing the job with my trainer. She's a coordinator who has worked with a number of counselors and teachers in the past. She told me the story of a particular teacher who seemed pretty set in her ways. This teacher absolutely refused to have a counselor in her classroom. This coordinator talked her into giving our counselor a chance and things worked out just fine. But the coordinator later found out that this teacher had had a horrible experience with a counselor in her classroom in the past.

Apparently, the last time she'd had a counselor in the classroom, the counselor just sat in the back and slept. Really not a cool move.

So here I am, a guy who lives an hour and a half away from the school in which I now work. And I have to be there by 7:30 in the morning. That means I have to be on the road by 6am. So I'm up before dawn even breaks. Me and the early bedtime are becoming very good friends. Anyway, I'm taking this long drive in the dark and I might be slightly sleep deprived.

Before I began spending the whole day at the school on my own, I knew that being tired might be an issue for me. And so, I dreamed about it the night before that first day. In my dream, I made it to school just fine. This is good because falling asleep at the wheel might be a real fear for me too. Side bar: so far, so good. Anyway, I arrived at the school and made my way to my office. While preparing for my day, I fell asleep. Inside my dream, I fell asleep.

I didn't have an Inception kind of thing where I had a dream within the dream. I just slept. But my unconscious self was unaware of being unconscious until I woke up (in the dream) two hours after school started. And then, panic set into the dream. I woke up and realized that I had yet to begin my first day. And the panic went away.

But I was still kind of tired when I got to school yesterday. And today. As I'm sure I will be tomorrow. But I really have to hide it tomorrow. Got a meeting with my supervisor in the morning. I know I'm more nervous than I need to be. I should probably just try to get a good night's sleep. And then drink copious amounts of caffeine on the hour and a half drive to the Middle of Nowhere Elementary School.