Last night - or maybe it was early this morning - I had a "producing" dream. I haven't had one (at least one that I can remember) for a while. But, I used to have them fairly often when I was new to the news business. They'd take on different incarnations. Sometimes, I'd be in the control room as the newscast was on the air, only to realize that I'd forgotten to write something - just as the anchor was about to read it! Other times, I would be preparing the newscast except I wouldn't be in the newsroom. In one dream, I was in my college dorm room! And, then, there were the dreams where I realized I had a newscast to put together, but decided it could wait while I did something else that was much more urgent. Meanwhile, it got closer and closer to deadline and I still didn't have anything written for the show. Oh, well, not to worry. In my dream, I knew I could still get it done - even if I only had one hour.
Last night's dream was a little different. I was someplace else - a dinner or something, I think - and then I went in to work. It didn't look like my newsroom, but at least one of my co-workers was there. Since I work the night shift, going to work after dinner makes you really, REALLY late! I knew that, once I got there, I'd only have a couple of hours to put a newscast together. No problem except that, in my dream, I couldn't find a computer that I could actually work at. Some of them didn't have the program I needed, others had mouse issues - like there wasn't enough line to actually move it around on the mousepad. From computer to computer I went, maybe writing one story here, another one there, but usually just ending up rushing on to another computer.
Eventually, there was only one hour until news time. That's when the scripts get printed, and I had about three stories ready to go. That's not good, which is probably why that's when I made myself wake up. I don't think I wanted to know how that dream would have ended.