Every attempt at writing today has been thwarted with pleasant telephone calls. I am only too happy to oblige my abettors in procrastination. I am still suffering from the lingering effects of a stupid anxiety dream I had last night, which managed to leave me full of feelings of panic and inadequacy.

In the dream, I was at the conference I�ll be going to in November. I was sharing a room with my friend L. and a third person, whom neither of us knew, in the conference hotel. For some reason, the hotel had grossly overbooked. To accommodate the scholars, they had set up opaque plastic partitions in some of the hallways for single rooms the size of a handicapped bathroom stall. L. and I thought we had lucked out. We were spared the partitions and were assigned to the in-house day care center, a huge room with three cots, neatly made up. L. and I unloaded our gear. The third had not yet arrived. We headed off to hear papers. While I was in a session, in classic anxiety dream fashion, I suddenly realized that I was giving a paper in two hours and that I had not finished it. I sprinted back to the room to try to put everything together and found a woman of about 50 with longish, wavy bottle-red hair lying naked in L.�s bed with the covers pulled up over all the important areas. �Hi!� she called out cheerfully. �Er, I think you�re in my friend�s bed,� I said. �Oh,� she said, not making a move (for which I was grateful). I recall wondering if she was the third roommate or just a crazy intruder. The dream ended with me having no hope of finishing my paper in time and wondering whether it would be better to try to wing it or to not show up.

Only I would dream about naked people who aren�t actually naked except in my mind.

The anxiety is totally real, though. I know I�ve got several months, but I�m already freaking out about everything. But if I weren�t, I just wouldn�t be me, would I?

0 people said it like they meant it