Paige Maddox
@paigeomatic in her carport
-Theatre-
I drove to Paige’s house twice in two days. Which is about 120 miles total. That is how badly I wanted to see her face.
She wasn’t home the first time I stopped by. Her and her husband were out buying a new fridge (funnily enough, they were buying it right around the corner from my house a million miles away). Luckily I am persistent and have nothing better to do but drop in on people and force them to talk to me.
Paige has known my fiance longer then I have but I feel like I am definitely now her favorite. We are constantly frustrated that we have never been cast as sisters in a show together so someone out there reading this please get on it. Thank you. Also, I will warn you this was definitely more of a chat than an interview. So get ready for more of me.
Interviewed 5.14.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: Thanks for talking to me.
Paige: Of course.
Casey: You're like, "anybody's actual face!"
Paige: Yay! And that's coming from me!
Casey: So I just have a couple of questions. So generally, how're you doing? How are you feeling?
Paige: I'm working still. So I'm feeling lucky for sure. Stuff really hasn't changed as much. And I think that's been really strange because even though everything we do at my job has slowed down, my job has not slowed down. If anything, it's gotten crazier. People don't know what to do now. So all of our normal processes, they don't apply. So we have to completely redo stuff.
So it's been the same, if not more stress. I'm really still stressed out, still fighting the same daily battles, still working, still talking to the same people.
It's one of those things where I'm basically a recluse if you let me be. You know this well from trying to ever talk to me ever. And it's been hard because I just sort of leaned into that and disappeared completely. Where I'm like, “I don't need to respond to text messages. I don't need to really go on Instagram.”
I'm not on Facebook. I haven't been on Facebook in 2020 at all. For the better. But also it's super isolating because a lot of things people are doing are on Facebook. Even with Zoom things and stuff like that, updates about how people are doing... It's on Facebook. So I've been completely retracting. But I'm to the point where I've gained enough spoon's back or I'm like, “Oh, I do want to talk to Casey standing in my driveway right now.” And I do want to find people to zoom chat with and things like that. So it's a weird sort of cocooning time. But it hasn't been intentional and I hope it's going to be intentional moving forward. That's the goal.
Casey: How is your family?
Paige: They seem to be hanging in there. My mom is where I get the homebody piece of me from. So she's got all her crafts. She's decided to paint all the doors on their first floor black just out of the blue. And they live in one of those two-story pretty standard suburban, very, very nice, cozy houses. But all of a sudden she's like, “All the doors are going black and I'm getting crystal doorknobs and we're gonna paint floors!” So she's nesting hardcore. But she's fine. She'd be fine never leaving the house. She did click whatever - the click thing is with Kroger anyway.
My dad's a lot like Daniel, where anytime anyone's getting in a car he is like, “Can I go?” So he's losing his mind.
My brother is all the way out in Oregon. He's working construction. So for a minute, they shut everything down. With good reason. But they started it back up as of this week, I think. So he's actually out. But I mean, everybody's hanging in there but everybody's really scared.
That's the thing. We're all just really scared. For people, for ourselves, for our family. There's a lot of just terror right under the surface. It's not unbridled. It's not like we're running screaming all the time. Some days. But everyone is just scared. And my mom really misses me because you know, I have a good relationship with her and we see each other once a week. Usually if not more. And not seeing each other. Not giving each other hugs. It's the worst thing in the world. It's the worst. I went over there for Mother's Day and we sat ten feet apart in my backyard and we had tea. I brought my tea thing and she had hers. And so we got to find things to do to get around it.
Casey: What else are you doing in quarantine?
Paige: That's been part of being such a recluse for the first part of it. The answer is nothing.
I am baking. That's been a weird thing. But because I bake anyway, watching the rest of the world discover it and cheering my friend's bread on has been wonderful. Sarah Wallace messaged me a couple days ago and was like “I made my first loaf of bread!” because Patrick bought two pounds of yeast. So she now has to go through that. Seeing everybody try these new things has been wonderful, but I've been baking the same amount, if not a little less because I haven't been able to find flour. So I had to preserve what I have.
I've been forcing myself to add some art back into my life. Obviously theatre, that's what we do. But I've always really loved painting and creating things with my hands and my issue has been I always do it for a reason. Where it's like my mom and I have this little side business where we do hand-done stamps, but it's for profit. So everything I did had like a “Oh! it's for something.” So I've been having a take a step back and go, what can I do that nobody's ever going to see? So I pulled out watercolors that I haven't touched in 10 years. And it's not good. But it doesn't matter. So it's been finding the little other ways to bring art into my life. Because for the first month and a half, I did none it. I wasn't reading. It was all work. And then passing out.
Casey: One of my questions was going to be, “Are you creating why or why not?” And the idea of “now I can create this for me.”
Paige: Yeah. Well that's the other thing that I started leaning into. I hope no one from my office is going read this. I'm considering a main career shift. I've always been a writer and I always wanted to be a writer.
Casey: What are you writing?
Paige: I have started taking classes in technical writing because that would be the day-to-day money side of it. But I have a probably wildly irresponsible number of unfinished novel ideas.
Casey: What kind of novel ideas?
Paige: Okay, so one is called Daring and Wit. It's a buddy adventure story with a character who recently let me know that they are actually nonbinary. So that's going to be fun. I'm gonna be reaching out to that community to get ideas of what that looks like. But they have pirate ghosts and Mayan temples and just - Indiana Jones on speed.
The other one I want to focus on is called Molly Lollie. It's a children's book about a mouse that lives in the attic of a family. And she sneaks down when the little girl is reading under her covers at night and reads books over her shoulder. And then, mysteriously, things start happening to the books. The mice get blamed and then she has to find out what happened to them.
So it's ranging from like that weird, ridiculous. No literary value at all. It is for me. The reason I haven't written it is I look at it and I go "Well it's not going to be any good. My voice isn't going to contribute anything. I'm lower middle class, middle-aged white lady. Who gives a shit what I have to say?” But looking at it from that perspective of like I have been entrusted with this by something, whatever you believe, is the muse inspiration. And it doesn't matter if it's good. I need to get it out because something has inspired me with this idea. I can't remember the name of the lady who wrote Eat, Pray, Love. But I watched a webinar with her the other day and she said that “When the voice of ‘this is not good enough’ comes out, my response is, ‘I didn't promise to be a good writer. I promised to be a writer.’ So I'm going to write.” And it was kind of the inspiration that kicked me into that.
Casey: What do you miss from before? It can be something silly, like just driving to target or something deeper.
Paige: I think the biggest thing for us collectively is we miss the woods. Badly. We had a lot of big aspirations to hike more this year. Use our backpacks, go outside. We were training June to be a trail dog. So just being able to go into nature without fear of running into humans. We haven't explored a lot of what trails are less populated and things like that. But the Appalachian Trail is closed right now.
So that's a big one. Missing nature. And exploring and going and seeing new things. I think the other big thing is I miss hugging my mom. I miss that. She does driveway visits like this relatively frequently. She'll come over. "I brought you good eats. Here you go. Here's food. Goodbye." I had the thought the first time she did it. It was like, I want to hug her so bad. And she always does this thing where you have to hug for six seconds. Because it releases all the good endorphins and she'll count it. And make you hold on.
So I miss that very badly. I think that and the woods.
Casey: How do you think you'll determine that it's OK to hug your mom again?
Paige: That's hard.
Casey: Better safe then sorry.
Paige: Absolutely. I mean, I just took a shower and washed my hands and everything and I'm still afraid to touch my face right now. I'm still very much in the camp of allowing my whole team to work from home forever if they want to. We can do our jobs remotely. There's no reason to force people back. I'm waiting for reliable, widespread testing to be a thing.
My parents rented a lake house at the end of August and they're hoping it's just when the virus dips. But our current plan is like, '“All right, we're gonna hardcore quarantine, not even go to Kroger for the two weeks beforehand. Midway through that week, we go get a test. That gives it enough time for the results to come back. And then if we're clear then we can see each other.” But I'm going to have to be convinced that tests are reliable enough. To not endanger my family. That is the thing I am the most scared of is getting other people sick.
And if we got it, it could be terrible because we've seen that too. But the odds are good that it'd be okay.
Casey: You're not immunocompromised. You're healthy.
Paige: Exactly. We're lucky enough to not be in any of those categories, but I am terrified of giving it to someone else and getting someone sick. That would be the worst thing in the world. So mine really comes down to the testing. Hopefully a vaccine, but that's a long ways off. They're saying like mid to late 2021. If they rush it.
Casey: I get the CNN updates on my watch and it's so bleak.
Paige: What was the thing about the darkest winter in history? An infectious disease specialist was speaking in front of the House and Senate and basically said, if nothing is done now, this will be the darkest winter in recorded history, meaning it's going to get worse. People are going to die.
Casey: If I'm able to have children, the stories from this, they're just going to be...
Paige: Absolutely wild. Where everything changed in like a second.
Casey: I mean, “I was a professional photographer and I did theater. And then literally weeks after this crazy shit happened, I was like pulling weeds in this guy's yard for money.”
Paige: It's so funny because, talking about theater specifically, I hadn't done it in a while because I took a break to plan our wedding. I took a break after the wedding. And then the break never broke. But watching everyone else and hearing Daniel lose contracts. Everybody lost all of that. I did, too because I was just starting to get back into it.
It's been so sad. There's that terror. But there's also just this sadness. You feel so sad for the whole world. You know, for every reason, for people who were sick, for the nurses, for people who are no longer doing what they love. For photographers. I mean, it's just so sad. It's fucking awful.
Casey: OK. I have one more question and then I'm going to take your picture and then I'm going to leave. Now, that you're like working at home, do you have any sacred spaces or routines that you found during Covid that you want to take into whatever post covid world looks like?
Paige: That's a really good question. Well, I think I'm getting to the point of finding them.
This one came from work, and I am very grateful to them for it. We've been using a platform called Cool Leaf which basically really challenges you to write fifty thousand words in a month. But it's like a challenge where the whole company does it together.
But one of the things we've done over the last 10 days is meditation. And you're supposed to meditate for at least ten minutes every day. And I used to meditate. And then I fell out of it. And it even became an anxiety thing for me because I'd sit down to try to and it would actually increase my panic. But I found that just sitting and breathing for ten minutes and not doing anything and allowing myself to not do anything… Going outside on our porch, on my lunch break. Again forced outside time has been huge. And it's that intentional outside time. Where it's like I'm going to go sit in the sunshine with my dogs and just not do anything for 30 minutes. So it's finding those places.
I feel like it's such a weird thing because a lot of people at this time are finding more things to do. I have just as many things to do as before. So it's finding time to not do things. And that's new for me because I'm that person who's like “I go home and then I'm going to do this. I'm gonna put this away and I'm going to cook and I'm going to...” And I try to do 10 things at once. So finding those moments of not doing anything have started to become sacred. And being okay with that. And that's very new. It's very new for me.
Casey: And what benefits are you getting from it?
Paige: Knowing when I'm not breathing, I think is the big thing because I was just operating. And then Daniel will go, “Hey, you should maybe take a deep breath. Ever.” But I notice it more. I have those moments. I've been sighing out loud a lot where I'll just hear myself going. *sigh*. And it's because my body is recognizing it. So I'm hoping it's starting to break through the anxiety a little bit because that's a struggle normally in life. But this has brought a whole different kind of anxiety into play for everyone. But I think my body is starting to be the one to catch me, which is good. It's very good.
It's so much easier to bottle it, too, because you're not seeing anyone, so you're not having those call-outs. So it's so much easier to bottle a bottle and bottle until you go, “I'm having a melt down right now!” So yeah, being on, on the same team as my body. And having it be the one to go, “OK we're breathing now.”
Today was the last day of the work mandated challenge. So I got to keep doing this. I can't stop.
Casey: It's like a muscle. If you keep doing it you get better at dropping in. That's why I ask the questions about what people find that's important to them during this. I hope they keep going, keep taking it forward. Just because it means you're putting yourself first. Because I wasn't. I'm notorious for not putting myself first. I say yes to everything. I'm nice to everyone. And I do everything and I don't have to do that.
Paige: I hope we all come out of it with the measure of grace to let that be OK in other people too. Because there's so much pressure and we build it up in our own heads. But it's that whole, “I have to go to this party because if I say no to this party then so and so is going to be mad at me, they're going to... And how are they going to think about me?”
This is something that is wonderful about my relationship with Emma. Because we both struggle with anxiety. And from day one, we've always said if you are too out of spoons to hang out and we have a planned hang out, all you have to do is say I do not have the energy to do this tonight. And it's OK.
So I hope everybody comes out with the same sort of thing like we can be on that same level where you're caring about yourself first, but you're also extending that to other people so that if they need to care for themselves or not. Yeah, it's OK. You give them that space. Even if it's giving them space to go, “Hey, I need someone. I'm going to come to you and just kind of focus on taking care of everybody while you're taking care of yourself.” Not in the way of like, “I'm going to say yes to everything”, but just knowing that everybody's kind of like going through the same weird trauma in their own way. That's a bright hope. At the end of it.
Casey: We'll just be kinder and more gentle. I hope so.
Paige: Yeah. I hope we don't go back to normal. Because normal wasn't working.
