For you, post-grad

For this past year I've started to realize there is a common lie that many of us post-grads are believing.

Everyone thinks they're alone.

She thinks that everyone else is starting their careers, but she's in limbo.

She thinks that everyone knows what they want to do in life, but she is confused.

She thinks that everyone has a ton of friends around, but she's alone.

She thinks that everyone has it together, but she's an emotional wreck.

She thinks that everyone else is living in an awesome city, but hers is underwhelming.

She thinks that everyone else's relationships are easy, but hers is a lot of work.

She thinks that everyone is a step ahead of her, and she's just lagging behind.

She thinks that everyone else is confident, but she feels small.

I finally have to put a stop to this madness! And it's not because my friends are going crazy and I'm sane. It's because we're all going a little bit crazy!

Every girlfriend I talk to has been facing a combination of the above list.

And last night, I was going CRAZY with the thought of #2!

But we're not behind everyone else. We're not the last one.

We're not the only ones confused, under-confident, excited and worried.

And I think if we all realized we're not the only ones, then we wouldn't feel so ashamed by not having it all together. We'd feel OK to live in the chaos of life and figure life out piece by piece.

So this is for you, my post-grad friend.

You don't know what the heck you're doing. Welcome to the club :)

With love from Pleasanton (not the coolest city on earth),

Paige

Proud wife alert!

Hello dearest blog readers,

Although not many of you are commenters, I know you're out there! I see you in the grocery store and you're up to date on my life because of this site!

So, hello to you.

I am back from my hiatus in the blogosphere to bring you some wonderful news!

Jeremy has done an exceptional job in his time in training at Ethicon Women's Health & Urology. He's gotten an awesome award recognizing him for his sales abilities and great reviews coming out of training into his territories in Northern CA. I'm SO proud of the hard work he has put in to doing a great job as a sales rep!

As a territory assistant, he assists the reps in his territory (CA, excluding San Diego), helping cover cases, meet with doctors and focus on a few key hospitals to maximize their growth. The idea of the position is to train you up so that when an open territory comes, you're able to take it over.

WELL, a week into Jeremy's time in the field, the rep in the South San Francisco territory has quit and he is taking over that territory!

This is awesome because it shows his boss knows he can take on this challenge, even though he's been in the field for 1 week! And for a million other reasons, but basically: we're excited!! And MAN is he busy now!

The South San Fran territory covers the whole San Jose area, San Luis Obispo (SLO), and Santa Barbara! His time will be most focused on the greater San Jose are accounts. It's great that we're only 30 minutes from San Jose so we don't have to move again back to back! But most likely we will be moving in a few months to be centralized.

With this new change, it looks like we'll be in the Bay Area for a while now! Maybe even a few years, we will see :)

So now it's my turn to focus on what I want to be doing career wise. I'm currently pursuing a career in Pharmaceutical Sales or Marketing. Who knows what will come about, but I am so excited to see what connections can be made and what positions open up in the near future!

Thanks for checking in!

With love from Pleasanton,

Paige

(Next blog will be pictures of our finished apartment!)

10 days.

So many times we wish we had something legitimate to support.

Here's something for us to give to:

My good friend Anna is in Haiti (her second home) and working at this organization she loooves called "Real Hope For Haiti" or RHFH.

This is Anna:

They have a cholera house for people to come and receive treatment. Cholera is spreading like crazy and taking the lives of many, many people.

They are overloaded, understaffed, exhausted, and in NEED!

They have 10 days to meet their current financial needs. Please please please consider giving what you are able to!!! And do so before you forget.

100% of your proceeds go straight to getting Haitians medicine and supplies.

For a quick idea of what the cholera house & rescue center is doing today, check out this blog of Anna's friend, Caroline.

And for a quick link to donate to RHFH, check out this blog.

Let's love people in tangible ways.

With love from Pleasanton,

Paige

In the mean time...

So I'm working on different blog posts and will one day update. Soon. I promise.

In the mean time, I laughed out loud at this Facebook status update my friend Laura Kennedy had:

"My brother just talked for like 10 minutes about poker strategy. And it just hit me that this is how men feel when we talk about feelings."

To the joys of life, the differences of the sexes, and laughter.

With love from Pleasanton,
Paige

"Christians should put up or shut up"

I really, really like this perspective.

A must-read, if you ask me. :)

With love from SacTown,

Paigey

Chatter

I once heard a difference in male and female friendships being described as men get to know each other by sharing activities and women get closer by sharing secrets.

This is SO true! My dad and I do things together, my mom and I talk together.

When I get back from hanging out with girlfriends, Jeremy asks what we did. When I tell him we talked... for 3 hours... he can hardly believe that was enjoyable let alone really fun!

Recently I've been much more conscious that sometimes our female-secret-sharing, although necessary and beautiful, can sneak up on us gals and make "sharing time" turn into "over-sharing time."

How do we define gossip? What is too much?

Where is "the line" drawn where restraint is shown and we don't say the next nugget of information we have??

I think part of the answer is when it's no longer helpful or good.

I see this when people (not excluding myself, of course) talk about their spouses or boyfriends. Why share about that incident? Why do I need to know this? Is it helpful or good to me?

OR when we talk about someone else's relationships or decisions. We examine their lives like it's our job to judge or fix or correct. I have that pit-of-the-stomach feeling from some word vomit today that was not helpful in any way towards anyone. Thank to Lord for grace & forgiveness.

We need to share our secrets. We need to bond the way we bond best! But I think we need to also learn to be quiet. Learn to be ok with having some secrets to ourselves and not having a vocal opinion on everything.

I'm learning this. Learning slowly.

"Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly."

2 TImothy 2:16

With love from San Dimas,

Paige

Life check

So apparently 1) I'm obsessed and 2) I should be her PR person because I REALLY like Shauna Niequist and am in a phase of reading everything she writes.

Here's a recent tidbit of questions she encouraged readers to think about:

Am I proud of the life I’m living?

What have I tried this month?

What have I learned about God this year?

What parts of my childhood faith am I leaving behind, and what parts am I choosing to keep with me for this leg of the journey?

Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small?

Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?

I really like those questions. I don't feel like they're unrealistic and they challenge us to always be forward thinkers, not getting stuck in our same old lives we lead.

Something that I've realized lately is that I'm adopting some bad characteristics. Some tumors on my soul that I haven't even noticed or decide to get rid of. I think it was due to complacence. I got negative, pessimistic and not full of the love of Jesus. I'm changing that, and these questions help me identify why those tumors are living there in the first place.

I hope they do good things in your life too. :)

With love from San Dimas,

Paige