The dreams have nothing to do with me vs. the world; they have little to do with the world at all, and that's kind of the problem. There's nothing about plans in them, nothing about hints or suggestions, just images, impressions and feelings that have a huge pull on me, that make me ache for there-ness that I've never experienced as here-ness.

It's not really a binary relationship, me and the world, but a relationship of size, scale and attention. Yeah, I make changes in my (very small, very local, very subtle) part of the world, and I think they make things better in small ways for (some) people, but the changes I've been able to make, the steps I've been able to take, don't really address the seeming impossibility of what is expected of me, of what I expect of myself, and I don't know that I can just give them up and be me, but not being able to move, to make what feels like progress, is grinding me down.