Snakes and lunatics

Snakes, every night.  Or I should say morning, for I wake up with these dreams wisping from my mind like so many seeping fogs.  Complex situations wrapped in anxiety, with odd travels and social webs.  And snakes.  Every day for the last week there has been a snake in my dreams.  I live with snakes, four of them; they are not a fearful thing for me, so I take it for what it is... snakes are full of ancient history and symbolism.
I looked it up.  Transmution.  Change.  Creation.  Shedding your skin, getting out of a rut, change, flexibility.  Slither away... go with the flow... that's what snake tells you. 
There you have it.  It's wrapped up in anxiety because I am doing things in ways I know could be done better, and not living up to my potential.  In work and in life.  I know I could take excellent care of myself, but I find myself eating too much chocolate because of this reason and that... helpless and unable to stop... unwilling, perhaps, to change.  It makes me grumpy, makes me fat, makes me unhappy in the end; but the stress of a job that (here's the kicker) ALSO does not let me do things the way I know they can be done better... not living up to my potential in the way I was trained... makes me so stressed that I seek what little pleasures I can.  Mostly earthy, wine and chocolate and sleep.
So, snakes.  Transmute.  I have so much magic and potential and so much fear to use it and live up to it.  It is so easy to get wrapped up in the stress and depression of what others are doing, what I'm not doing, that it becomes difficult to shine.  People get angry and jealous when you shine; while you're shining it doesn't bother you, but boy when you slip a bit and they take you down it's easy to agree "yes, I suck!" because it makes people feel better when you aren't challenging the ruts they are in. 

And lunatics.  I don't mean movie- crazies, but people all around you that are so out of control in their own heads that they can't see straight.  People who have no idea of the havoc they wreak on others with their crazy behavior; or maybe they just don't care.  Most of the time you can let it go, until it puts a pressure on your own existance and you come up against it with the realization that there's no rationalizing with this person, no talking sense into, no conversation or action ever that can change this or bring some kind of relief.  And when this person is part of your livelihood- an essential part in fact- it becomes very depressing very quickly.  Sort of like those horrible Pavlovian experiments that show how one's spirit gives up; the one where he threw dogs into a pool with no way out and waited to see how long until they gave up and drowned?  That one.  I'm not drowning but I'm sure sick of irrational people having a measure of control over me.  I hate it, hate it with all my being.  Why and how do lunatics end up this far in life, with this much control over others?  This one was by chance, and it's a rickety unstable ride which makes me unsure how far it will go. 

So, transmute it.  How?  How!?  I can change myself, I do and often, and with great pride when I stride for the better.  As for the work, I will try in small ways to create what needs to be.  But this!  I can't transmute this. I can't change it.  I can't even protect myself, mostly.  I am at the fancy and whim of a lunatic, and I have to work especially hard not to slip slide into a depression rut filled with chocolate, self-loathing and bitterness.  That is the work to be done, not easy, not pleasurable, and maybe not even possible.  We shall see.