The Yellow Ferrari

I had a strange dream:

I'm standing on a corner in a bleak, dreary street near my workplace. It's a “dream street” that doesn’t exist in the real world. There’s nothing that dingy in my neighbourhood. I have a Ministerial Briefing in my hand - a type of document that I spend a lot of my time working on.

Suddenly, a low-slung, mean-looking, vivid yellow Ferrari rumbled slowly up the street with my Director-General at the wheel. The Director-General is the mega-boss of the whole Department. As far as I know he doesn’t actually own a yellow Ferrari, but let’s just say he could if he wanted one … or six.

He sees me by the side of the road and slows down. I know that he’s stopping because he thinks I'm waiting for him, that the briefing in my hand must urgently need his attention.

I start to panic; he shouldn't be stopping that Ferrari to handle some silly little political drama. I wave him on urgently, trying to communicate that the briefing isn’t really important. He got the message, smiled and roared off in his Ferrari - the brightest and most exciting thing in the world.

I had dinner with my friends Steve and Edmund to celebrate Steve's birthday. Edmund is very interested in dreams, so I always tell him if I’ve had any unusual ones. I was quite impressed with his analysis of this one.

“It’s about what’s really important” he said sagely. A kind of calm comes over him when he’s doing his guru impression. It’s easy to imagine him sitting in the lotus position and wearing a turban. “Maybe you’re the one in the yellow Ferrari, letting go of the small stuff.”

I'm usually a dream analysis skeptic, but I'm happy to embrace this as a message from my unconscious. I could work hard my whole life only to get hit by a bus before I ever have a chance to drive my yellow Ferrari to freedom, or I could, metaphorically, race off into the sunset right now. I thought of Tim at the piano in the America Bar "working" for a living. There's man firmly seated at the wheel of his personal yellow Ferrari.

It was suddenly very clear to me that I don't love my job. I care about my work and I take pride in it, but I'm not passionate about what I do all day. It's research and study and teaching that I babble about to my bored friends, not Ministerial Submissions and performance reporting.

All of my doubts and resistance to leaving my job for a year of foreign adventure collapsed. For the rest of the night Steve, Edmund and I toasted the yellow Ferrari, our new symbol of putting personal fulfilment above mindless career advancement.