When I saw today’s word for the Creativity Boot Camp project – fly - I blinked a couple of times because I couldn’t believe it. I rubbed my eyes, I shook my head a little bit, I moved closer to the computer screen. Flying. It really says flying.

All night long I dreamed I was flying. In the gauzy period when I was just closing my eyes – not quite awake and not quite asleep – I dreamed I was floating, floating, dreamy floating, lying in the soft air as if I were in a Chagall painting.

I floated a lot in my sleep. And there were times I was flying, pushing off from the ground with my right foot, soaring, wheeling, swooping. Flying. As flying usually does, it felt like complete freedom.

Who knows why we dream what we do, but I suspect I dreamed of flying all night because of an enormous change that’s about to happen. I’ve alluded to it a lot, the incredible stress and frequent misery of my job. I love the work itself, I love my authors, I love the books I acquire, I love the publisher I acquire them for, I just don’t love the terrible pressures. Monday I am giving my notice, my last day will be the end of this month.

The sky is vast when the chains fall away – everything is possible. What will I do? I hope to do some writing, helping authors improve their manuscripts (if you know anyone who needs the help of a writer, think of me!). I will do some teaching. I have a lot of possibilities: my graduate minor is statistics and I love to analyze data; I love to write; I have done a lot of qualitative research, focus groups and the like; I am a social psychologist which means among other things that I know how to research literatures and synthesize them, and I know how to think about why people do what they do.

the sky is upside down in a reflection here - the world does that sometimes, too

Flying is thrilling, flying is scary, there is danger in flying, crashing lives in the shadows, but what are we here for? To stand on the ground our whole lives and just look at the sky?