Recurring dreams

I’ve always had recurring dreams. But they keep changing as I get older.

When I was a baby lawyer, I had four constantly recurring dreams (which were shared by hubby – I don’t know if that means we are soulmates or if all baby lawyers have the same stress dreams):

• The exam dream. Pretty obvious. The exam is tomorrow, and I haven’t been to class all term. (I actually pretty much lived this in a couple of my undergrad classes.) But in my dreams, the class was always Grade 12 French.
• The tooth dream. My tooth is loose, and then my tongue is playing with it, and then it falls out. Repeat.
• The extra rooms dream. This was always a good dream, so of course I had it less often. You find a room in your apartment/house that you forgot was there. (The apartment house was never my actual apartment/house — it was always super modern or Victorian — usually many many levels.) The newly-discovered extra room is usually full of old furniture and crap, but it has great light and space, and with a ton of work, it will be a great new space. Such an optimistic dream – what an opportunity! Hubby discovered a lighthouse once (OH, he forgot his home had a lighthouse attached to it!).
• The phone dream. I’m dialing the phone, and I make a mistake, and have to start again. Repeat 8000 times. (I blame my first law firm for this – for long distance client calls, you had to enter the billing code before the phone number in order to bill the client for the long distance charges. And I did a lot of work with Australian clients. Between billing codes and country codes, there were about 30 numbers to enter, and a mistake was not uncommon.)

I almost never have the exam dream anymore. I figure this is because I live the exam dream every day at the office. Here’s a new client, new problem – ready, set, go – solve their issue immediately. Every day is like writing an exam, and it doesn’t stress me as much as it used to.

Ditto the tooth dream, happily, and the extra rooms dream, which is a loss.

Recently I’m having dreams of living in a dormitory – communal living, multiple rumpled beds. And the communal space is full of my hoarded, piled up crap – for example, 200 empty dirty margarine containers in a drawer. There’s often clothing everywhere, and it’s old and ratty and needs to be thrown out. There are old notebooks and text books, and my stuff spills out of my space and into the space of my roommates (who are NEVER there).

Last night I had the dorm dream again, and this time I kept getting new deliveries at my dorm desk every few minutes – greeting cards, cheap jewelry, chocolate bars. I’d open them and throw them away (I don’t want this!), and a new delivery of new crap would arrive.

My googling tells me this means I need space in my life – probably personal space. My work may be taking up too much of my time.

That’s probably right.

What are your recurring dreams and what do you think they mean?