The Economist is Coming, The Economist is Coming!

My urge to blog is being overshadowed by my urge to write a play that I can turn in next month. It's still in the works and I fear needs major re-doing, but I will get there.

However, today my interest is being piqued by something else entirely.

It's no secret that I have no always made the best choice in life. I jumped off the "fast track" after high school, ignoring my acceptance letters to Yale, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence and moving straight into the working world, meaning a restaurant in the middle of Times Square in New York. And I was living the life: Pounding the pavement audition after audition, crashing here and there from apartment to apartment, busing tables and learning how to tell those crazy high society New York women "Listen lady, You don't got a reservation, you don't got a table, now sit your bony butt down!" (Okay, maybe I didn't say those words, but that was the attitude we were taught.

I'm not cut out for New York, the inhabitants there are strange and have odd customs, like eating their young and decorating their caves with bad art. Vernacular that I had hitherto only heard in bad movies is part of the norm there. Honestly I felt like the city was eating itself and slowing puking itself back up. That would explain the smell. Clearly I'm not a New York is not for me, and I am not for it. You gotta have a certain gene to live there, it's gotta be in your blood.

The words please and thank you are in my blood instead.

I know it's not nice to bust on New York, but you should hear what I think about Los Angeles.

So, my second fast track towards the big time theatre came to a halt when I turned down some bit parts in big shows and moved far away. Married a sailor, went to community college, moved all over to small parts of the country where everything closes at six and never opens on Sunday. Maybe it was a mistake, I had to walk away from a lot of opportunities because the Navy said "MOVE" but when I walk through the door of our little apartment and see my sweet husband napping on the couch with our sweet little cat - it doesn't feel like a mistake.

However, it's pretty clear the after 20+ years of studying and living theatre, I can't do theatre anymore. I have to get home, I need to make dinner. I can't stay out till 2am everyday with the kids - I have a day-job. So I need a new career.

I've been looking into computers, mostly creating and maintaining databases for businesses like the one I work for now. That's how I got started here, and I loved every minute of it. It suited me, detail oriented work that required lots of attention and organization. Making complicated things look easy to use. I liked it. I still like it.

But today something else caught my eye. We're preparing for a meeting with an "economist" in our office. It's a big deal there are hushed conversations about what the "economist" will say. There is curiosity about what he has been looking at. It's like ushering in a famous psychic...the air is tingling with - with - with ECONOMY!

And being the good girl that I am, I'm researching what he's going to talk about. I've been reading his emails about his techniques and what he teaches his students. I'm fascinated. I'm enthralled.

I can also see flaws in his analysis. He's not looking at all the factors.

Then he mentions the factors.

Hey! I could do this! I could study this stuff, I could do the research and the analysis, I could learn all these details. I could do this!

And as I sit at the end of summer, as I stare at my college catalog ready to plan the rest of my education starting from scratch over again, my eyes are wandering toward business and economy.

And I wonder....