Maybe you can help me with this recurring dream.

[Tobin S.]

The content of my recurring dream is always different, but the theme is always the same. I just had it again last night and I have been having this type of dream maybe twice a year for several years now. I'll relate to you my dream last night and then draw out the theme.

I am a truck driver in my waking life and in this dream I'm driving a truck. I miss my exit off an interstate, and I keep missing places where I can turn around. I keep traveling down the road the wrong way and can't double back. Whenever I try to, my brakes don't want to work right and I can't slow down in time to make the turn around. It's as if I'm being forced down a road I don't want to go down like I have no choice in the matter. All I can do is guide the rig down the road.

Then I start seeing road signs that I recognize and realize that I have just gone around in a big circle and I'm back where I started. But I have this urgent feeling that I'm running behind, and I'm trying to hurry, but things just keep going wrong. I have that feeling throughout the dream.

The dream shifts and now I am on an airplane. I am in a hurry to get off the plane and I have a small carry-on suitcase with me. I have this little suitcase in real life and I use it for my job. I'm in such a hurry that I forget the suitcase as I get off the plane. I don't realize it until I'm away from the plane a good deal and I can't go back and retrieve it. I ask someone if the the bag will be where the luggage comes out on those conveyors (I forget what those are called...the baggage claim, I think) and he tells me yes and that it will be in the basement.

I go down into a basement that's rather small and more like a utility storage area and then realize it's the wrong basement. I then find an elevator to take me to the basement. There is a professor on the elevator and he is teaching a female student. I get down to the basement and, thankfully, finally run across my bag (remember all this time being in a huge hurry like I'm already running behind), but I open the bag and things are missing. But there is a computer chip like an SD card that is in the bag and this seems to be the thing that is most important to me. My wife is suddenly there and tells me that at least I have that. I put some things in the bag and that's the end of the dream.

The theme to these kinds of dreams is that I'm always in a hurry like I'm running behind and things keep happening to me that keep making me later and later...like I'm trying my best to catch up, but through either a mistake of my own or some other setback beyond my control I just can't catch up and get to where I urgently think I need to be. The mood of the dream is one of frustration and bordering on panic.