The Hidden Soft Spots

Recent Dream:

Began as a visit to an old building that was meant to be a church but really looked a bit more like a massive dairy barn. The whole structure was wood. The first floor was open, the pews pushed to the side and people were milling about. The ceiling was a good 20-30ft up; the room had wide windows along the sides. It was beautiful, well-crafted, a unique and memorable space. I was touring the facility with a young man who was considering it for a small wedding. Three of us went upstairs to see the smaller chapel housed there. There were maybe 12 other people already upstairs. The place was calm and relaxed. This man and I were walking and talking when suddenly the floor gave way and he plunged. I looked through the hole in the floor to see him screaming and bleeding, bones exposed on the ground below. The other people upstairs panicked and started to run toward the stairs and several of them found weak spots in the wood and they themselves fell. There was screaming and fear as we all realized the floor was littered with dark, weak spots of wood; how we’d missed them up to that point wasn’t clear. Every step we took had the potential to be gravity’s finest; to be our last. I remember frozen in place, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the fields beyond, wondering how such a quiet day could become so loud.
I have no idea what it means.

Day One

Here dies the first day of this grand adventure. For as much as I've done that may seem crazy to an outsider, up to this point the moves I've made and risks I've taken have been quite measured. I double and triple check safety gear, I do not quit a job until another is secure. My ducks are kept firmly ensconced in the row in which I've placed them. I am not reckless. Today starts a shift away from those habits, and my ducks are clumped, frightened and facing every which way.
This morning I awoke, made coffee, showered and dressed for work as I have done for the past two years (though I gave myself an extra half-hour of sleep). I made an office space for myself and a schedule, written in sharpie like it was the word of God. My hands rested on the keyboard in the way I learned to hold them back in typing class. I breathed, said a prayer, and began the day.

It was a full and productive. I am brimming with ideas, most of which will prove to go nowhere. I've had encouragement from unlikely sources. I am 90% sure this is the move I'm to be making. I have no evidence to support this theory.

My mind keeps going back to planting. At my old job, we worked with restoring old mined sites. These sites were certified cleared of mining influence, but were old areas where the soil had been so compacted that only scrub plants could grow; nothing long-term or healthy could survive with soil that hard and compressed. Roots couldn't penetrate the unnatural hardpan. My former company would go in and rip up the scrub plants. They would till the hardened soil over and over again, breaking up the clumps and once again adding air to the earth. And only when the soil was loosened was it ready to be planted with the seeds of the long-term, the seeds that would take it from scrub land to healthy forest, that place it was supposed to be all along. There was destruction in the process of construction, something I'm realizing is almost universally true.
I can say that on day one.