Dreaming of snakes

I've always been fascinated with dreams. I've prayed that God would give me the gift of interpretation like he did Joseph in the Bible. I've owned a dream journal and dream dictionary in the past to look up adjectives and nouns from my dreams. Never gained a whole lot of insight from them though.

Similar to the green snake in my dream

I found out that most of our dreams included things we thought of or saw in our waking day. 

I was getting ready to say that I haven't thought about snakes recently, but just remembered that my neighbor told me about a huge dead snake in the road at the entrance of our neighborhood 5 days ago and I've thought about it since. 

In my dream, snakes were curled up and stretched out everywhere. They would appear and disappear under furniture. One did strike at me and bite me as I was running by it. I was so paranoid-standing up on furniture, afraid to walk anywhere, looking over my shoulder and under my feet constantly. I looked and felt like a crazy person. 

According to http://www.snakedreams.org/snake-dream.html:

A snake is a symbol of the unconscious

Snakes or serpents indicate you’re in the process of healing and resolving issues

The snake is a symbol for an untamed part of yourself or an untapped resource

Snakes could represent your intuition or spiritual aspects of yourself; your instinctual drive, what moves you from the depths of your soul

Snakes or serpents tend to show up in dreams in times of transition and transformation

Generally, a snake featured in a dream means that you’re dealing with a difficult situation or unsettling emotions in your waking life. On the positive side of this dream analysis, dreaming of snakes could also mean that healing and transformation are taking place.

The words that stood out to me when I was reading this: healing, transition, transformation, and unsettling emotions. I have been healing over the last year. I feel real good. Comfortable with work and life, even though I probably shouldn't be. I took a huge pay cut when I resigned from teaching. Our finances have been suffering since. I kept the kids home for financial reasons, but they had to be enrolled in school again for mental issues. I have three part-time jobs, but they do not equal what I was making as a teacher. Teaching does pay good, but at a cost. I do not know if the pay equals the amount of stress required to do the job. I resigned from teaching for a reason. I didn't even keep my teacher resource books or manipulatives. I packed up very little when I resigned and gave everything to a new teacher. I completely shut off and blocked educational terms and jargon from my mind. Pitied teacher friends when they posted about teacher duties. Felt nauseous when I thought about lesson planning and standing in front of kids teaching and going to professional development. Couldn't bring myself to click the 'apply' button without shuttering. My counselor and I talked about it regularly. She mentioned maybe I needed a peripheral job in education. Like not a lead teacher, but something still in the school setting like office manager, assistant, or coach. 

I was finally asked for an interview at a middle school in town. For some reason, the thought of teaching in middle school, didn't make me feel so sick. The position is in a departmentalized class, which means I would teach the same subject all day. That makes lesson planning less intimidating because I am teaching the same lesson 4 times a day, which means I'd just need to plan 5 awesome lessons a week! I decided to go interview and see what happened. The principal recommended me for the position and then the district offered me the job today! *gasp* 

This is why I am dreaming about snakes. I'm getting ready for a transition back into education. I have some unsettling emotions about it. I like where I am emotionally and I do not want a relapse. I like not having to work on anything in the evenings. I like not being anxious when I wake up in the morning. Then again... I may be in a better place now that I might actually enjoy teaching again. I guess we will find out! 
R