Cindy Agoncillo Blog, Dream Journal

Dream Journal: Dream or Memory?

I was just about to fall asleep, but then I remembered a work email I needed to send. As I laid in bed with my laptop, I quickly typed up an email to a client about needing to cut several tenths of an inch off her organization’s advertisement for my company’s magazine. I hit send, closed my laptop, and went to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, I vaguely remembered emailing the client before bed and was going to tweet about how I wasn’t sure if sending the email was a dream or a memory. It was a memory, but it apparently didn’t happen exactly as I remembered. I soon got a phone call from my coworker Lance. He was in Chicago (both in the dream and in real life) on business at an industry event. He said that a woman had received an email from our company, but she was concerned because it had been marked as spam. He started to describe the contents of the email, and it sounded like the message I had sent.

“Yes, I sent that email last night before going to bed. Does it say something about an ad and several tenths of an inch?”
“Yes, but are you sure?” he asked. “Are you sure you didn’t send it while you were asleep? It’s all backwards.”
“Backwards?! What do you mean?”
“Just check your sent folder.”

I logged into my email and checked the sent folder. There was the email I remembered sending. When I opened the email, though, I was really confused. The words were all jumbled and running together. There was a string of random numbers as well as an unusual link to an unfamiliar website. The email had been sent to Gail Rudowicz (a real person who is an icon of our company’s industry), who was NOT the intended recipient of the email I thought I had sent.
I was trying to make sense out of everything when I finally got to work that day. Was that email a dream or a memory? Both, I guess. I really did send an email, so that was a memory. However, staying awake to type it and hit send was completely a dream. Who knew that sleep-emailing was a thing?!
You can imagine my confusion and concern when I woke up in real life…
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Cindy Agoncillo Blog

Pay Day

“I guess this is your official welcome,” said the VP of my office, as she handed me my very first paycheck of my first post-graduate, “real world”, putting-the-degree-to-use JOB. For three weeks I have been going into that office and working on different projects, but tearing off those perforated edges seemed to make everything a bit more real. It kind of hit me this morning as I got out of my car and headed into the office: I’m going to work. I’m not going to class or just visiting this place. I am going into this building, as I do every Monday through Friday, to work. Every weekday, I go into an office where my time is worth something (right now, it’s not worth that much, and even less after taxes). And every two weeks, the company shows me how much they value my time (and every month, I show my landlord how much I value having a place to live).

So far, everything has been going well. I’m currently juggling a couple projects, and my boss is impressed with how much progress I have made on them. It will be a great moment to receive my projects back from the printer and hold my work in my hands. As I have been working on these projects, I have come to appreciate my graphics professor’s “client-based” approach to teaching and grading our work. I turn in version after version and receive revision after revision, until at last, the client (my boss) is pleased with what she sees. Though sometimes I don’t understand why she wants what she wants, I am able to disassociate myself from the work. When an idea is shot down, I don’t have to go down with it. As my co-worker told me during my first days at the office, “If she changes everything you did, don’t take it personally.” My co-workers are really great and make working a lot of fun. Today, the art department had a Pixie Stix eating contest, which ended up being more of a joke than a competition. At least once a day, I hear, “That reminds me of this one movie…” or “Who was that guy who was in…”. Lunch consists of half an hour of Sports Center or cheesy sci-fi movies, and when the opportunity arises, practical jokes are sure to happen.