Throughout my life, I’ve always felt… a little out-of-place.

A lot out-of-place.

From the time a boy named Jason puked on me after the mile run in 6th grade (I still don’t feel clean), to my bespectacled, brace-faced, promless high school career, to my time spent trying to understand and accept life as a Yankee living in various parts of the South (um, boiled peanuts? really?), feeling out-of-place has actually become my way in the world.  The only way I feel in place.

Make sense?

In fact, I’m not really sure what would happen if one day I woke up and found myself where I’m supposed to be.  Where I feel comfortable.

Probably the last of the loose screws would detach itself from my mind and fall out of my ear and, as I watch it roll-bounce down the pavement toward the vanishing point of existence, the nice young men in their clean white coats would come and take me away to a place where I would never feel comfortable again.

Probably.

But that’s just speculation.

This whole out-of-placeness was only further confirmed in a recent memo from my editor at Re-Nest.  It read (and I paraphrase):

I’m so pleased to welcome five new members [to the team]: Laurie (New York), Alexa (San Francisco), Liana (New York), Julia (Chicago), and Katie (Sanford, North Carolina).

Okay.  Aside from the fact that they all have movie star names while mine is so girl-next-door, notice anything… odd?  I don’t know… something that makes it all too painfully clear that I’m ridiculously out of my element?

I’ll give you a hint.

Maybe — maybe — it’s the fact that I’m the only person whose city needed to be followed by the state name for clarification.

Maybe.

Maybe because Sanford is not really a city, but more like a town with a Waffle House and a Cracker Barrel.

Maybe.

But you know what?

Since feeling out of place makes me feel in place, I’m going to take this as a positive sign.  If I can’t go to the Big City to get a job, I’ll make the Big City job come to me.

I think this could work.