Job Stuff

I feel guilty for the fact that so many of my readers are lawyers and I'm not writing anything about life as a lawyer. Because I'm not living life as a lawyer, really, these days. It's not completely true, of course. I'm sitting in an armchair with a pile of cases for a contract assignment, which is very interesting. And the lens that gets put into your eyes through law school doesn't go away.

So anyway I feel this pressure to tell you how my story turns out. Will she go to another law firm? Will she hang out a shingle? Will she write / teach / sail / wait tables? I feel this pressure to make my current stage of life relevant to my loyal audience of lawyers and law students. "And she quit life as a lawyer and lived happily ever after....." or "And she left her law firm, and realized how much she loved the work she did every day, so she joined another firm and lived happily ever after...."

But I can't really. It's true that some of the career options I'm looking at closely are legal. Some of them aren't. I'm pulled most strongly, and a little confusingly, to a particular opportunity that's not legal. Mostly, though, my instinct is telling me to wait a little longer. I'm trying to trust this little voice even though parts of me are getting nervous and wondering whether it's crazy. While I wait I can't really tell you what I'm thinking about with any specificity, both because it is evolving and because people in my real life will pester me with questions or jump to conclusions or take my posts as more determinative than they are.

When I was in fifth grade our class had to do a project about a profession. Each kid picked a profession or a job and researched it, talked to someone who did it, wrote a report and gave a presentation. My friend Drew did his on supermarkets and supermarket owners, and I remember thinking that was really cool to learn how a grocery store is run. When it was my turn to choose I still hadn't decided what profession I wanted to study (I had a bunch I was thinking about, and hadn't narrowed it down). The teacher came to me and in a moment of panic I looked up at a poster on the wall that had a quotation on it that I'd always liked. Below the quotation it said "Socrates, Philosopher." So I told my teacher that the profession I wanted to study was philosopher.

And she let me, after pausing for a beat. When I asked her where I could find a philosopher to interview she told me she wasn't sure there were any working around here. I ended up interviewing a math teacher from another school about what a philosopher does, day in and day out. I'm not sure why, but my teacher satisfied me that this math teacher knew, and with the faith of a fifth grader I concentrated on my questions and his answers, not his qualifications. I think maybe he had majored in philosophy or something.

I came away with the interview with this basic oversimplified idea of what a philosopher does every day. He or she looks at the world and asks "Why?" And when someone gives you an answer you ask "Why?" again. And you keep on doing that and you end up pretty quickly with questions that get very hard to answer, but are kind of fun to think about it. It was an amazing discovery to a fifth grader, the power that the inquiry "why" had to bring assumptions to light or bring conversations to a depth I'd never seen before. I irritated my friends and my parents by asking "why" all the time for a few months before I moved on to something else.

Except I'm not sure I really ever did move on to something else. I just stopped doing it out loud, maybe. I'm not writing so much about my job thoughts, these days, but you can be sure that little fifth grade voice keeps asking me "Why?" when I notice myself pulled in one direction, or battling against another. The process of noticing my own responses to things, and querying myself about why, has been wonderfully revealing and fun and empowering. I guess I'm just sorry I'm not blogging about it more, or better.

Why?

Probably because I'm afraid. But why? I dunno. Because I don't trust my readers enough to see my thoughts in writing as they evolve? Because I don't trust myself? I don't know.

Comments

[mad]

Whether or not you trust us (or yourself) enough to include the thoughts and ideas in your blog, you don't "owe" us a darn thing. It's YOUR story, and we come back day after day because we want to see how it unfolds, however it unfolds. Some of us are here for the law stuff, some of us for the sailing, others for the beautiful prose on whatever topic. But it's your space, your forum, and (I repeat) your story. Whatever you choose to do, whatever you choose to tell, we'll be here to read about it.

[cmc]

That's right!

[tmac]

and S, come on!
the possibility of
false advertising is a canard

the one/person/etc.
who could know even a smidge of you
and be interested only (exclusively)
in some law portion
is
nonexistent
(except as one of your internal people/voices)

.... said "he who knows the full range of your internal and external critics better than most"

[tmac]

that being said

i'd prefer hearing about you
and the etc. & etc.
to hearing about only "you and the law"
anyway

so, I may be biased.

[monica]

i agree with mad. it's not fun anymore if you feel you owe us anything.