>>/6114/
> Could it be related to age?
Pretty sure it's a mid-life crisis dream. At the start of this journey it all seemed so clear -- "success is up there"
Now that I should be nearly there, I have no idea where I am or where to go from here.

 >>/6115/
>  have lost my count at how many times I have been dreaming about this

Have you looked up any dream dictionaries? They're fun, sometimes useful, sometimes frustrating, and often a new-age barrel of crap.
The reason "dream dictionaries" work, is that the human experience transcends cultures and times. Except where it doesn't.
The trick I've latched onto in interpreting dreams, is that everything there, is you. When your uncle shows up in the dream, it's not your uncle, it's how you feel about your uncle that shows up in the dream.
Usually I've found that if you read several common reasons for a symbol, such as water, to be used in a dream, that it will "feel right" and you'll be able to piece together what the whole of it was.
And in my case, they're usually elaborate questions, like the mice building Earth in Hitchhiker's Guide
Other times it's a frustrating mess because you know this aspect means something, but you can't find what.

Since you live in Europe, you may not relate to this at all, but it occurred to me after I wrote down the themes and the one recent example. In the cave-city, all the streets were in shops and the like, and they were stuff to overflowing with ... random things.

The feeling I had in the dream was very memorable, and one I've felt before. But I don't know if you'll understand if you've never moved into a stick-built standalone house that someone else just moved out of.
Did you ever move in, and find their junk drawer still full? The first of two houses I lived in during my childhood, we were renting a house on the water, and there was a barn that had been used as a shop, a garage, and a storage area. It was still full of many, many metal items. Both small parts, and complete ... things.
Being 6, I didn't know what I was looking at, and I understood I wasn't supposed to mess with them, but the sheer wonder at their intricacy that spoke to some alien design and applicability to a purpose.
To say I was mesmerized would be a great exageration, but I was certainly filled with wonder. And I have felt it every time I moved -- looking for that, which was left behind, and trying to piece together the stories they tell.

Why does my subconscious include that feeling in a story about accepting a job from a muckety-muck who wants to have another factory running for his profit?

> thinking rationally about it in a "post-mortem" manner

Yeah, never do that. It's fun, it can lead to a decent 'fic, but dreams are their own thing.

> I find it more complicated
My wife always stutters, amazed, at the level of detail my dreams piece together to tell the story. At least, the few times I wrote it all down. But to be sure, some are simpler.
One dream, maybe 12 years ago? I was snuggling with my girlfriend, who was a rabbit, but had done up her appearance (more grooming/makeup than any kind of shape-shifting) to look like a wolf. Rabbits aren't too common in my dreams, but the one dream I remember "getting lucky" was with the cheerleading werewolves (I was home-schooled, and that dream was before I would otherwise have been in highschool. Just teenage lust, and I guess I was a furry all the way down, so ... werewolves).