waffling and unproductivity

I had an alarmingly moral-of-the-story dream the other night. In the dream I was quite a bit younger than I actually am, and I had an internship/entry level job at a magazine. I'm not sure what sort of magazine it was, but I think it was a "women's" magazine that had a mix of fashion/fluff and actual substantial articles.

The editor of the magazine [why was I being directly supervised by the actual editor?] wasn't very clear about what she actually wanted me to do. She showed me several different articles, both from her magazine and other magazines, hinting at each turn that she'd like me to do a similar article. I was confused and felt like I should come up with the Best of all those ideas, and also felt like, if she hadn't specifically told me yet to write a specific article, I could just wait for her to tell me.

That wasn't the best course of action. One day she called me in and asked me where my article was. I started hemming and hawing and babbling about how I wasn't sure which one she wanted and that I had therefore waited; and that I now saw the error of my ways and realized that I should have just started on one of them instead of being paralyzed by indecision and a lack of direction. I begged her to give me another chance because I had learned some initiative and decision from this experience.

I'm not sure I like these transparently moralistic dreams.

Oh, and to make it worse, I wasn't the only intern there. There were several other girls marching purposefully around and apparently writing actual articles while I waffled. They all had an air of put-togetherness, potential, and authority.