Specifically the stress you feel in your dreams.
Which meant that I had to plan and organize newscasts on a daily basis.
That involved writing, editing others' writing, picking visual elements and getting it all together in a timed package that fit into a certain number of minutes.
I left t.v. news way back in 1985.
But I occasionally still have what my wife and I jokingly call "The Producer Dream".
It's nearly always the same.
The clock has ticked down to the time for the newscast to begin and for a variety of reasons I have absolutely nothing prepared.
Sometimes I rush into the studio with a handful of "wire copy" (pages ripped from an A.P. or U.P.I. machine - though I doubt they even exist in this digital age).
There is no video, no photos, no stories from any of my reporters.
And I am in a total panic.
Then I wake up and realize it was only a dream.
I don't know why I have these dreams more than 30 years after I left that profession behind.
But yesterday I was reading an essay by the best selling and honored Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.
He related his history with his father, who was a very intelligent and disciplined man, graduating from university with honors and becoming a teacher.
Murakami said when he was young he was not interested in school and learning and his father became more and more upset by this to the extent that they did not see each other for more than 20 years.
And then I read this passage which leaped off the page at me:
I still have nightmares in which I have to take a test and can't answer a single question. Time ticks away as I do nothing, though I'm well aware that failing the test will have major consequences -- that sort of dream. I usually wake up in a cold sweat.
Judy had read this article before I did and when I asked her about it we both laughed as she exclaimed: "The Producer Dream!"
We have talked with other people over the years and found that seemingly everyone has their own particular stress dream.
I'm just glad it's not only me.
