get the lead out - part I

It's August. Nearly September. And as the fall begins, I think it's time to collect my thoughts coherently. I have a story that it's time to start telling. So, do I start at the beginning, or do I start at the end?
Let's try the beginning for a while. I'm Laura. I’m about a month away from my 39th birthday. I live in the South. I have a job, two dogs, family and friends. I have a house. I have lots of interests, things I'm curious about.
Those are the exterior facets of my life. I’m pretty, but overweight. I’m smart, but not brilliant. I’m clever, but until now, not driven. And as a result, what I have is an ordinary life. When I was younger, I thought I wasn’t designed for an ordinary small town life, though I lived in a small town. I didn’t feel like I belonged there. I’m not sure where I felt I belonged. As I got older, I decided I would be a journalist. But what I really thought was that the bluebird of happiness was going to rest on my shoulder and reward me for being clever and intuitive. Everything was going to go my way, and I was going to become someone admired, someone interviewed on the Oprah show. I didn’t want to be a star, but I wanted to be someone who was so interesting that oodles of people would want to know me.
Here’s what’s happened so far. I left home for college. I was, well, I was ready for it, I guess, but I didn’t really know what I wanted. The bluebird of happiness probably visited a few times, but it was like releasing the genie from the bottle, but not knowing what you wanted to wish for. So I never risked anything. I never went in a single direction for more than a few months at a time.
In the meantime, things got harder. I had some tough breaks while I was out there. Some things were just part of growing up. Some things were the result of my choices. But with little direction and no practice sacrificing for something I really wanted, I sort of deflated in the face of the hardships. I got out of the experience what I put into it. In other words, not a heck of a lot.
I think it’s a bit melodramatic to say that I’ve been recovering from that ever since, but it did affect the path my life took, which was to play it very safe. After I left college, I did that for about 5 years, in a small city in north Georgia, working the job I took right out of college.
After that, I got an opportunity to move from that small north Georgia town to a large north Georgia town – the largest, in fact. The move promised new training and new opportunities, working for a large, dynamic airline. I moved about a year before 9-11.
I know. The luck of the Irish. More on this soon.

--Laura