J F Vernon Blog

Two dreams, similar vibe. They ran into each other. 

Description and conclusions

It feels like it should be thirty years ago.

I’m back producing television and video properly again—London studios for one client, Carlisle for another. I’m busy, useful, and known. Everyone assumes I’m full-time, embedded, dependable. In truth, I’m freelance, coming and going as I always did, juggling multiple projects by instinct and momentum rather than structure.

A couple of straightforward productions slip. Not badly. Not irretrievably. But suddenly I realise the transmission slot has passed. No one ever told me the deadlines. No one in either production office hinted they mattered. Had I known, I’d have worked the weekend and handed both over finished, not as works in progress. I feel peeved rather than panicked—more disappointed in the unspoken assumptions than in myself.

And yet I know, even in the dream, that I should have insisted. Deadlines end things. They turn play into delivery. Without them, work drifts; however imaginative it is, it is part of the realisation process: an audience needs to see it.

I leave the studio late on Monday and head for the bus—but the bus is being mobbed by creatures, half sheep, half baboon. They behave like adjuncts to the transport system, as if this is normal now: gangs chasing passengers, friendly if indulged, violent if resisted. I’ve already bought a ticket, but one look at them tells me this route isn’t for me anymore. I decided to walk.

The bus feels like a settled, commuting version of myself—suburban, routine, stationary in a way that no longer fits. Walking feels slower, but truer.

I find myself climbing onto a medieval town wall—Carlisle, I think. A place I worked decades ago. The old wall is now a garden walkway, with benches, flowers, ivy, and daffodils. Elevated. Calm. I’m being followed, though. 

I end up in a dead-end shanty alley where the way through is blocked by a wall of discarded things—white goods stacked 12ft high, knick-knacks, junk stacked carefully, deliberately, like a barrier. I remember coming this way before, scrambling across easily, purposefully. This time I hesitate. I’m aware of my body. Of knocking things down. Of being seen. Of falling. I struggle, frustrated by how much effort this now takes.

Alongside all this, I’m worried about my face—an itch, a rash—and about my mental health. They feel connected. I’ve found the best expert in the world, in Australia, and somehow I’ve got myself to Sydney. The distance feels irrelevant. The need feels precise.

I have a 6:00 pm appointment. At 6:10, I call to apologise for being late and am told I can’t rebook until Wednesday. I explain I’ve come all this way—from the UK. They ask if I’m a resident. I’m not. I shouldn’t even have an appointment. I’m put through anyway.

I talk to the consultant as I move through crowds and sleet. I have to take a selfie because my hoodie and beard are covered in snow. That’s when I notice it properly: I have a beard and moustache, like Catweazle. Older. Uncool. Almost homeless-looking. My first thought is that I need a shave and a haircut. Im I can’t believe I’ve been going round like this. 

The consultant and I talk easily over the phone. There’s rapport. But when he asks me to describe my symptoms, I can’t find the words or even believe they ever existed. Is this the problem? I struggle to articulate what I mean. 

Some conclusion is reached, though I don’t remember it clearly. Something like: You don’t have a problem you can’t resolve yourself.

I wake knowing the dream isn’t about illness, or deadlines, or even my old career.

It’s about roles.

For years, those roles were distributed—producer, client, scheduler, motivator, editor, gatekeeper. Now they’ve collapsed inward. Writing is no longer something I can treat as freelance play, drifting until it finds an ending. If I want to live in the world, I have to take on all the roles consciously.

Deadlines don’t limit imagination; they give it somewhere to land.

Structure isn’t bureaucracy; it’s containment.

And the life I once lived—moving lightly, slipping through gaps—belongs to another time.

This is not a loss. It’s a consolidation.

If I want an easier life now—if I want things to run smoothly—I have to stop waiting for authority to arrive from elsewhere. I have to name the deadlines, set the boundaries, and do the unglamorous work of production alongside the creative joy of making.

The dream isn’t telling me to go back.

It’s asking me to take responsibility for where I am.

The dream first described:

It feels like it should be thirty years ago. I’m producing videos and TV for two clients. The staff at both believe I am working full-time for them; in fact, I am freelance, though in the past  I’ve worked for one on a short full-time contract a couple of times. When a couple of straightforward productions miss their deadline, I am peeved because neither organisation has provided or told me of or even hinted of  a deadline, certainly not a pressing one. I’m working out of studios in London for one client and in Manchester for another. I manage to keep a reasonable relationship with my colleagues, some I have known on and off for many years. They are used to my comings and goings. 

As their stress levels increase, I wonder why I haven’t been told when things are due. It’s a Monday; I could have worked the weekend if I’d known and handed over both finished, not as works in progress. Either way, by late Monday afternoon, the transmission times have passed. I leave and have to avoid the local bus out of time because it’s being pestered by gangs of creatures that are a cross between a woolly sheep and a chimpanzee. 

I decide to walk and climb onto a section of the medieval town wall, now a pedestrian walkway and garden. At some point I find myself in the dead end alley of a shanty town where the way through is a wall of discarded junk: white foods, nicknacks on shelves. I have clambered over this. I seem to remember coming this way and managing before – today I  struggle. I feel I will knock things off the stack and alert the owner, or fall off, or simply make it out. 

I’ve been worried about a skin problem, an itch or rash and my mental health – both connected. I found the best  expert in Australia, so I got myself to Sydney. I have a 6:00 pm local appointment booked. By 6:10 pm, I called to apologise for being late. I’m told I can’t rebook until Wednesday. I point out that I’ve ‘come all this way’ – from the UK to Australia. I’m asked if I’m a resident, as I couldn’t have made an appointment if I wasn’t. I’m not. I’m put through to the consultant. We talk as I try to dodge the crowds and even sleet. I have to take a selfie as my face and hoodie are covered in snow. I’m surprised to notice that I have a beard and moustache – like Catweasle. The consultant and I talk. I cannot describe the rash or itching, nor my state of mind. We come to some rational conclusion … (which I guess could be the dream’s meaning). 

JV: Using the following dream sequence provide a series of succinct Jungian prompts to help elicit a meanings 

KAI as Jung > Below is a succinct, Jungian-style prompt sequence, designed to elicit meaning rather than impose it. The prompts spiral—affect → role → obstruction → body → guide—so you can linger where the psyche resists.

I. Temporal Dislocation & Vocation

1. Why does the dream insist this is “thirty years ago”?
   
2. Who were you becoming professionally at that time, but never fully authorised to be?
   
3. What does being “freelance but assumed full-time” mirror in your psychic life now?

II. Authority, Expectation & the Missed Deadline

4. Who, in the dream, is meant to set the deadline?
   
5. Where in waking life are expectations placed on you without articulation?
   
6. What feeling arises when you realise you “could have delivered” if only you had known?

III. Transmission Failure

7. What does “missing transmission” signify beyond work—what fails to reach the world?
   
8. Is the work unfinished, or simply unreceived?

IV. The Animal Horde

9. What quality do the sheep–chimp creatures embody (instinctual, social, mocking, feral)?
   
10. What part of you do they prevent from boarding the bus?
    
11. What does the bus represent that you can no longer take?

V. The Wall & the Detour

12. What changes when you climb the medieval wall instead of staying at ground level?
    
13. Is this elevation protection, perspective, or withdrawal?

VI. The Shanty Alley & Obstruction

14. What emotion arises at the junk-wall: fear, shame, caution, familiarity?
    
15. What are the “white goods” and nicknacks doing here—useful, domestic, discarded?
    
16. What was different “the last time you managed”?

VII. The Body as Message

17. When did concern about skin and mind first coincide in waking life?
    
18. If the rash could speak, what single sentence would it say?
    
19. Where else in your life do boundaries feel irritated or permeable?

VIII. The Journey to the Expert

20. Why must healing be sought at the farthest possible distance?
    
21. What does it cost to arrive ten minutes late?
    
22. Who decides whether you are “allowed” to be treated?

IX. The Unexpected Face

23. What does the Catweazle-like beard and moustache add—age, wildness, exile, wisdom?
    
24. How do you feel on seeing this version of yourself?

X. The Consultant as Inner Figure

25. Does the consultant feel external, or already known to you?
    
26. What happens when you cannot describe your symptoms?
    
27. What kind of “rational conclusion” is reached—medical, moral, or existential?

XI. Closing Orientation

28. What is the dream asking you to stop managing alone?
    
29. What must now be named explicitly rather than assumed?
    
30. If the dream were advising you, what would it ask you to do differently this week?

JV responses to prompts

1 It has been 26 years since I was making videos at any capacity as my job. I’ve done a few one offs and self shot/edited pieces since. It felt like barking back to the 1990s when I had multiple clients and projects on the go.

2 A video producer, out and about doing, rather than managing a team from my own production office which would have been the way to juggle several clients rather than trying to do it all myself. 

3 I’m used to juggling several things and spending a few hours on each. I want to treat writing as a job, to make it my full time job, to have deadlines. Not to have other external projects I can’t get on top of getting in the way. 

4 I should have insisted that I was given a deadline; it is essential to a project that will be brought to an end, rather than something being desired, but somewhat experimental and so allowed to meander as part of the process – I thought I was on one of those. Brought in for my imagination and sense of play.

5 All my creative projects begin, drift or end based on schedules I manage to,  or fail to place on them. 

6 Double disappointment: I work better with a deadline, better still with a challenging tight turn around. Though hired as the director, and writer, I should have recognised that I needed to step in as the producer and client liaison as no one else. 

7 Reputationally my clients suffer if something wasn’t delivered; I suffer if the client feels I should have taken on these other responsibilities. There have been times when I would ‘take on the entire project’, acting as both the in-house producer and external supplier and successfully juggling it all. 

8 unfinished, though a good editor could have followed some suggestions from me over the phone and wrapped up the jobs. 

9 They are adjuncts to the bus service, as if they’ve acquired a role, chasing passengers onto the buses (old fashioned red London buses with a rear corner access), but we’re like temple baboons which created the sense that I was in Asia, or an unknown possibly non-UK city. If indulged the barons were friendly, but if rejected they could be violent and gang up on you. They came after me as I had bought a ticket but took one look at them and decided the bus wasn’t for me. I’d walk instead. 

10 An every day, suburban, commuting and settled version of me.

11 it represents stasis, that I am a part of the city – I’m not, I’m an occasional visitor, I’d prefer to walk or take a taxi.

12 I think I recognise Carlisle. It has a substantial medieval town wall and it’s the town where a production company I took work to and  worked for in the 1980s and 1990s. 

13 it as a pedestrian path, walk and garden, with a bench, flower beds, ivy and daffodils.

14 Frustration, that I’ll need to go around, that I can no longer navigate this route with ease, that it might come down or I could attract the attention of someone nearby. 

15 Discarded, but stacked like a wall, either to serve as a wall, or as a way to sort them out, as in a junk yard. 

16 I was more agile, had a greater sense of purpose. It wasn’t a barrier or problem . It was a short cut that worked. 

17 I do have a facial itch. I’m conscious of neurodivergence in the family and in me.

18 It’s not cancer; it’s dust mite  allergy. 

19 It feels as if the barriers and restrictions have increased with age, that my twenties and even early thirties were carefree and barrier free – I came and went as I pleased.

20 The best and most appropriate intervention I could find, anywhere on the planet, was the search. The travel seemed inconsequential. And as it transpired I didn’t need to be there, I could have spoken to the specialist on the phone rather than in person. 

21 A missed opportunity. I like to meet a person, to see them in the flesh, to shake their hand and read their face and body language, to see the space they inhabit. All of these cues tell me something about them and how they are responding to my request. 

22 In this instance it is the gatekeeper receptionist or the consultant’s assistant. They think I’ve got an appointment in error, by managing to transcend them.

23 Age, not cool, not urban, less carefree and more like homeless. Someone who wouldn’t be working ‘on the media’ with clients as I am supposed to be doing. 

24 it’s quaint to see snow in my beard but I immediately think I need a shave and a haircut. 

25 He’s external. Just our brief exchange and I feel we’d have a rapport. 

26 I feel I must be a fake; though I’m not. That I’m making it up, or that it is inconsequential. 

27 Was any conclusion reached ? What are you doing here? You don’t have a problem you can’t resolve yourself. There was a conclusion, but I don’t recall it. Maybe about using my greater awareness of what’s going on around me to quietly pick up tasks that others might be responsible for, but I should do anyway if I want an easy life, or for things to run smoothly. 

28 I’m at a loss for words. I’m winging it. I had assumed I’d be able to articulate it and we’d have a useful consultation. But as I try to put it into words it sounds like trivial poor project management – not a mental health crisis.

29 The life you dreamed about is long gone. That was then, what happens now? 

30 Take on all the roles, or set out and undertake the tasks that were historically shared through a production team. Set schedules and deadlines, be a motivator, planner and assistant, be a creative mirror, get it done. 

KAI as Jung replies: 

What follows is a Jungian synthesis, not an explanation about the dream but an articulation of the meaning that has already emerged through your answers. 

I. The Anachronistic Persona: “Back in the 1990s”

The dream deliberately misdates itself. You are not remembering the 1990s; you are re-inhabiting a psychic configuration from that period: the mobile, improvisational, multi-client producer who could juggle complexity through energy, agility, and proximity.

In Jungian terms, this is a re-constellated persona—an old professional mask that still contains libido. The dream is not nostalgic; it is diagnostic. It asks:

Can this persona still function under present conditions?

Your answers already say no. What worked then depended on:

• bodily agility
  
• porous boundaries
  
• informal shortcuts
  
• unspoken assumptions
  
• surplus stamina

The dream shows, without judgment, that time has altered the economy of energy. The persona has not adapted, but the psyche has noticed.

II. Deadlines, or the Absence of Authority

This is the dream’s structural spine.

Across both dreams, no one names the deadline—yet everyone assumes responsibility lies with you. This is crucial. From a Jungian perspective, this is not “poor project management” but a failure of psychic authority allocation. You recognise that:

• creativity meanders unless bounded
  
• imagination requires containment
  
• play without an end point becomes anxiety

The dream exposes a split:

• Director / Writer (play, vision, exploration)
  
• Producer / Client (authority, limits, closure)

In the 1990s, these roles were distributed externally. Now, the psyche insists: they must be integrated internally. This is classic individuation pressure: what was once held by the world must now be held by the Self.

III. The Bus, the Animals, and the Refusal of the Old Route

The sheep–chimp creatures are superbly drawn by the unconscious. They are:

• semi-domesticated
  
• semi-feral
  
• social enforcers rather than predators

They guard the bus, which you correctly identify as:

an everyday, suburban, settled, commuting self.

This is not temptation; it is coercive normalisation. The animals say: this is how one travels now. Your refusal—quiet, decisive—is pivotal. You choose to walk. In Jungian terms, this is a withdrawal of libido from a collective route. The psyche refuses a mode of life that depends on:

• routine compliance
  
• negotiated aggression
  
• habitual belonging

Instead, you move to the wall.

IV. The Wall, the Shortcut, and the Loss of Ease

The medieval wall (Carlisle is no accident) is an older structure of orientation—historical, elevated, slow.

Before, you could shortcut through the junk alley:

• agile
  
• unconcerned
  
• unobserved

Now:

• the body hesitates
  
• the risk is visible
  
• the junk has solidified into a wall

This is not failure. It is the end of improvisational trespass.

The psyche is clear:

Shortcuts that once worked now require payment.

This corresponds precisely to your lived insight:

“I was more agile, had a greater sense of purpose.”

Purpose has not vanished—but it now demands form.

V. The Skin, the Journey, and the Consultant

In Jung, the skin is a boundary organ of the psyche.

You do not find pathology. You find sensitivity.

Dust mite allergy is symbolically exact:

• microscopic irritants
  
• accumulated unnoticed matter
  
• reaction rather than disease

The enormous journey to Australia dramatizes a truth you already reached:

You did not need to go anywhere.

The consultant is not healer-as-authority; he is confirmation.

When you cannot describe your symptoms, the dream says something precise:

There is no illness that can be delegated outward.

This is not minimisation. It is a reclamation of agency.

VI. The Beard, the Snow, and the Image Shock

The Catweazle-like appearance is not ridiculous. It is de-identification. You momentarily see yourself outside the media persona:

• older
  
• less curated
  
• unconcerned with cool

Your immediate wish to shave is revealing: the ego wants the old image restored.

But the dream has already done its work: it has shown you what you look like when the persona drops.

VII. The Dream’s Conclusion (Which You “Forgot”)

You say you cannot recall the conclusion. Jung would smile at this. When a dream’s conclusion is forgotten, it usually means:

The conclusion is behavioural, not conceptual.

You already articulated it in Answer 30.

The Dream’s Meaning (Teleological Statement)

This dream is not about failure, ageing, or lost careers.

It is about psychic consolidation.

The unconscious is saying:

What was once distributed across teams, cities, and systems must now be carried consciously by you.

Not as a burden—but as an authority. Writing cannot remain “freelance” inside you. It requires:

• deadlines
  
• roles
  
• structure
  
• closure

Not to stifle imagination—but to let it land.

Final Jungian Question (The Only One That Matters)

Where, this week, will you act as your own producer—not just your director?

That is where this dream points.