The "PILOT" Blog - Mea Culpa

After years of hemming and hawing, I have ARRIVED in Blogland. For a girl who started out in the hey day of Silicon Valley, I am extrodinarily "behind on the times." In those days, I could carry on multiple IM chats, download scores of MP3's from Napster, could not part with my Palm Pilot (that's what they called the PDA in those days), and let the record show--I "BLOGGED" on the internet before the word even came into existence. Fast forward 10 years...I struggle to figure out my Blackberry PDA, I just recently made the switch from MySpace to Facebook (still cannot figure that thing out), my Ipod has an embarassing stock of less than 100 songs, and while I was telling a story about my years in private Buddhist school (yes, it does have the same effect as Catholic school) , a 6th grader asked with a completely straight face, "Um...what exactly is a Walkman?"

In the real world, I work in the private sector and spend most of my days solving fires in the IT and supply chain world for an OEM consumer goods manufacturer. But I have always wanted to be a writer, among other things: education administrator, business consultant, event planner (darn Gemini trait that puts me in danger of being diagnosed as schizo). I have a huge dusty box of childhood journals and typewritten stories in the garage to prove it. At some point, I stopped writing and when I had my mid-life crisis most recently, I realized that this was what was missing from my life--an ability to move and inspire others through my writing. Ok...truth be told, that was what the PR guys told me to say. Really, I am just in it for relieving stress, giggles, and grins.

When I had to think of a title for this blog, it reminded me of the question which was once posed to me, "If you wrote an autobiography, what would you call it?" Over the years, snazzy words have come to mind--the same ones that came to mind as I extensively researched (read: Googled "Cool words") for the title of this blog: Paradigm Shift, Oxymoron, Serendipity. I settled on "Mea Culpa" because:
1) it rolls off the tongue just so
2) it makes people think, "What does THAT mean?"
3) the meaning has some significance as it aligns to my personal philosophy and perspective on life. Mea Culpa means "my own fault" and the original form of it calls to mind confession at Catholic church. I generally believe that the problems we face in modern day society, including my own, is a culture that encourages a lack of accountability and little time for self-reflection on one's own actions and our impact on those around us. Mea Culpa is the daily self-reflection in all its blog-style glory of what we recognize as the fruits of our labor and the conscious choices we make that have a corresponding karmic effect. Mea Culpa is a reminder to all that we can hold truths to be self-evident and one of those important truths is that only we are accountable for our own actions. (Geez, I can already hear my husband's words echoing in the distance, "See, I KNEW you were Republican!" ...Stay tuned for my upcoming blog on being a fence-sitter & bipartisan politics...)

So welcome to my first attempt at delving back into the depths of my sub-conscious, striving to apply some meaning to this so-called life.