The Shared Nightmare

I graduated from university some 34 years ago. There was one thing about it I had forgotten until a few years ago.

I was at a consultancy a few years ago, that unfortunately, went out of business due to a lack of work after we delivered the last of our large multi year projects. There was a great mix of people there, young recent graduates, experienced veterans and an older PhD, and we all sat around a big table and chatted over our lunch break.

At one lunch chat, having nightmares about not being able to graduate because you some how forget to attend some course came up. The older PhD said.... yeah... I  had those for decades after graduation.   Yes, I had those too!

And what I found strange and memorable about it was I probably had only stopped having them in the not so recent past.  Probably 25+ years of decreasing severity, but no one or group I had ever been with before had ever mentioned nightmares.   That may be because the brilliant group of us at the consultancy all had some other common characteristic that meant we had not spent our careers sitting in large slow moving businesses, and had temperaments  that didn't find that attractive.

...... we cared a lot about what we did, and that could give you nightmares.   I don't expect your typical , or garden variety,  CEO gets nightmares.