Last week when my mother was visiting (and giving me her monthly “if you just rinsed off your dishes right after eating…” lecture) we rented Premonition (with Sandra Bullock). The eerie concept of premonitions has been haunting me since. I think I had one a few months ago when I arrived at the office feeling suddenly very troubled, almost shaking with some unknown worry. I went into the bathroom and cried, but I had no idea why. I felt as though something bad was going to happen, and I phoned my best friend Bob about it.
Days passed with no explanation. About two weeks later Bob was mowing the lawn at his Manitowoc campground and was attacked by bees. He experienced major swelling in his throat and began to feel faint. He made his way indoors, and finding it hard to stand up, he dialed 911. While on the phone, he collapsed, smashing his head on the way down. Blood spurted on the linoleum, the table, and the walls. EMS arrived to find him blue, his eyes rolled back into his head, just in time to save his life.
I never connected the events until I began searching for my own premonitions after the movie. I’m not one to believe in things that don’t have a scientific explanation, but who doesn’t think it would be cool to have super powers?
I had a dream last night that my very pregnant friend had a baby (could it have been because her husband IM’ed me that she had gone into labor?), but the newborn was able to not only smile and laugh but sit up in bed, crawl, even do a bit of walking, and most impressive of all - ask me in a complete sentence with no grammatical errors to put her in her swing. In the dream, no one but me thought these things were out of the ordinary, and I grew exasperated trying to make them see how she was not at all normal - she was very, very special. Now, I’d like to think my premonition means Isabel will be extraordinarily gifted (knowing her parents, ocupop principal Michael Nieling and wife Sara, this wouldn’t be at all surprising). Will my premonition come true? Stay tuned to find out. I got a text message at 5 this morning announcing her birth. I’ll call later, and if the baby gets on the phone and talks to me, well, then, I think I’ll quit my day job and become a fortune teller.
The most fascinating thing about the movie Premonition was that Sandra Bullock experienced seven days of the week out of order. One day her husband was dead. The next day, he was eating Cheerios and reading the paper before work. The next, his decapitated head rolled out of his coffin. Thursday, they made love. It was weird, and I had to watch the special features to figure out what was going on.
Some weeks I feel the same–of course not to that degree, but sometimes it seems like my days don’t flow logically. One day, tons of leads come in and it looks as though I’ll have to turn down work. The next, I’ll spend my day willing emails to pop up in my inbox. I guess that’s the curse of working for yourself rather than at a 9 to 5 job with a predictable amount of money coming in on a regular basis. I’ve spoken to some people in related fields who have given up on the solo gig. Going it alone can be scary, sure, and it takes a certain kind of personality (insane) to remain unfazed by the fact that some days there’s no more coffee, no more toilet paper, and no more money.
I went to High Tech Happy Hour last night at Novation Campus (not for the free beer and food), and from what I saw there, I’m not alone. I met so many creative, brave, smart people who hung out their shingle because they believed in themselves. They believe that what they can produce alone is superior to what might be produced elsewhere. Take, for example, Bliss* Video Productions’ Kristin*, who I recently profiled in EventDV magazine. Her bluntly stated goal when she left her steady job at a video production company to launch her own business: to create a wedding video “that actually doesn’t suck.” This, I believe, is a testament to the integrity of people who go into business for themselves. They don’t do it because it’s profitable (of course, that would be nice, and in Kristin*’s case, that came true), or because it’s going to advance their career. They do it because of an instinctual drive to do whatever it takes to be the best (setting your own hours and being able to work in your PJs has nothing to do with it, I swear). Another example is my neighbor Penelope Trunk, who after digging herself out of the debris on 9/11, instinctively traded her Wall St.-based business development job for a home-based one as a writer and mother in Madison. It’s my hope that we will recognize this integrity and sensitivity to life’s nuances in one another and support sole proprietorships, freelancers, and small, local businesses. This way we all win.
On a related note, if anyone’s looking for a palm reading or dream interpretation, I charge $25/hour.
