I have things I should be doing...

I really do.  I wouldn't say I'm procrastinating so much as... okay, yeah, forget it.  I'm procrastinating.  I have a big meeting at work tomorrow.  It's not one of those like "make or break the rest of your life" kind of meetings, but it is important. 

Let me back-track.  Well hell, how far back should I track?

Okay, so, I went to school for the ever-relevant and practical "theater degree".  What one is supposed to do with that in the proverbial real world, I will never know.  But as a mentor once said of me, "well, you interviewed well and while you knew nothing about the subject at hand, I figured you could at least act your way through it."  She was only slightly kidding.  I have a theater/creative writing degree that I have applied in very, very few ways.  Straight out of college, I was working for a radio station.  I was paid pennies for days upon days of work.  It was fun and exciting sometimes, but I didn't see much of a future there.  Plus, the "soon-to-be(ex)husband" wasn't doing much with his life, either and someone had to make some money.  So I scoured the want ads and flung my resume at anyone I could find.  I got an interview for a job and honestly, I had NO idea what the company did when I interviewed.  I'm not sure I knew what the company did AFTER I interviewed.  Honestly, I'm not so sure I knew exactly what it was we did even after I accepted the job.  But accept the job I did, and I was tossed right into the center of corporate America.

Cut to four years later when I was sitting across the desk from a blustering idiot who was rambling on about some nonsense that ended with "we no longer need your services."  (I skipped over the hours about hours of blood, sweat and tears I willingly gave during those four years; the weeks I spent away from home and my (failing) fledgling marriage.)  And once the devastating news settled and the months of just pain that followed subsided, none of that mattered.  I know that it wasn't what I was meant to do with my life.  While I was content, I wasn't truly happy and I wouldn't ever do anything more than let myself and those around me who mattered down once it was all said and done.

So no, there actually aren't any regrets.  I learned a lot about life in those four years.

So anyway, pain, sorrow, hurt feelings, resentments blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda it's now a year after that "we no longer need your services" conversation and I've been freelancing my way through life.  I realized I was missing that ever-necessary component called "health insurance" (and "human interaction," but I digress...) and I decided to get me one of those part-time jobs.  It was meant to be a time filler and nothing more.

But I never do things half-assed and the next thing I know, I'm not just climbing the corporate later, I'm like, being propelled up with one of those helicopter-hat things in the New Super Mario Brothers game for the Wii.  I never, ever would have thought that I'd want to be a life-long employee of retail establishment XYZ, but the more I learned, the more I loved and now I'm sitting pretty at the middle of the ladder.

ANNNNNYway, tomorrow I have a meeting with my boss that isn't make-or-break in and of itself, but one thing I did learn from that previous place is that every conversation matters.  And I know the picture I present tomorrow is going to be pretty damn critical.

And yet, I'm "not" procrastinating and sitting here instead updating the software on my laptop, my itunes and my iphone all at one time (thus making it virtually impossible to do much of anything else because, of course, those little prompts are demanding ALL of my time.)  (And yes, I did manage to get this blog written in that time-span.  Whatever.)

I guess I'm avoiding the fact that I have to put down on paper that I am working damn hard to achieve the title of "next up" within the next year.  Only with "next up" comes the possibility of being relocated and I was just starting to feel like I may have found home.

Oh damn it, see, I blog and get to the heart of the situation.  I guess that means my excuses have expired.  Next up, we'll talk about that definition of "home".

A New Paige

I'd be lying if I said this was my first blog.

My very, very first blog I started back when I first discovered the internet in my last years of high school. It was 1997 and I was so very "in" as I stayed up late at night, fiddling with text colors and placement. I was all about the aesthetics, even then. I choose bright yellow and a screaming red - modern, you know. And I dedicated page after page to the first of what would become a long string of unrequited love affairs. It wasn't always unrequited - none of them were, actually. They'd start quite, erm, "requited" and then something would change. But more about that later.

Then I did take a break from the blogging business for awhile. And I started back again in 2004 when I met the soon-to-be(ex)husband. I had much to say about all those wedding details, you know. And of course, it was all planned from the curl in my hair to the 6 pence in my shoe. I never let go of those aesthetics (or the unrequited love affairs... only this one was with the man in my mind versus the man in front of me... but again, more about that later.)

After settling in to married life... and then divorced life a couple of years later, I decided it was time to turn a new Paige and I began a new blog about my life. It was the innocuous kind, the kind I hope this one will become. It was all about me and my heart ache and more than one on that list of unrequited love affairs. I wrote about my dogs, my cooking (or lack thereof) adventures... my explorations of self.

That blog ended, well, shall we say tragically. There is a limit to how much one should put "out" there. (Especially if one is out-putting from work. Ahem. Lesson learned.) That Paige was destroyed abruptly. The entries, of course, are saved. I've read back through them and they hurt my heart. I'd like to think I've changed since then. It's possible.

I had another, completely anonymous and totally fantastic blog. It was... oh, it was a side of me that I never, ever shared. And it was writing like I've never, ever written. I wish for it to be discovered some day and turned into one of those silky, luxuriously covered books on that one shelf in the shelf far to the right at Barnes and Noble. You know, the kind with the red satin bookmark that holds you at that last tantalizing page until you can break free from the real world and lock yourself in a bathroom and light some candles and pick it up again? Yeah, that kind of book. I loved that side of me.

So here we are, back in the present. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this page is a culmination of all of those Paiges. I expect there will be some innocuous blathering on and on about my cooking (or lack thereof) adventures. There will probably be some mumblings about the new soon-to-be husband. And of course the latest challenge in my life that comes packaged in 11 and 9 year old stepdaughters. You may even see a bit of that hidden Paige, too.

Regardless, I hope to keep it interesting as I'm a real... Paige Turner.