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i quit.
October 08, 2004
i've decided to stop being a lawyer.
i wish i could be like peter gibbons and, you know, just stop being a lawyer. yeah, i'm just not going to do it anymore. but that's not quite an option. but there are options out there, and i'm in search of them. granted, those options may require me to get some more education, maybe even to use capital letters. but right now, i don't care about capital letters.
in the last couple of weeks, something snapped. everything written here is both cause and effect - for two weeks now, i've written on pretty much a daily basis. in the death of my beloved 10-year old Olympus IS-2, i've rediscovered photography (when will that damned camera get here, anyway?). i've looked out the windows of my world at people who are doing things i admire, who maybe aren't living the complete dream, but are working and living in worlds that at least bear some relation to who they really are, to everything that is best about them.
I’m an attorney by certification and education, but not by heart. I have a strange memory for the epiphanic points in my life, the turns and impositions of inertia that got me here. I remember Furr’s Cafeteria in Northcross Mall, with my parents, in seventh grade. I don’t remember what I was eating, but I also don’t remember ever not getting the Salisbury steak with mushrooms, and probably fried okra and macaroni and cheese. I remember them telling me that if I was already playing football, that I couldn’t take choir as well, that yet another activity would interfere further with a disinterest in school that was becoming increasingly obvious. Lesson learned - music was not going to fly.
Cut to many years later, entering college. I remember hanging out with my stepdad one night, one of the rare nights that only he and I went out to eat. Fuddruckers. We talked about what I would major in at college, and my ready answer was journalism. Language had always been my strength, and in one year of high school journalism, I revealed an application for the one natural talent I truly had, with one statewide and one national award for my first article out of the box. This, of course, was before I “discovered” that I was also particularly talented in bed, a certainty that further experience and a certain Seinfeld episode would later erode. There is still substantial evidence, however, that I am a great kisser. But as usual, I digress.
At any rate, I remember my stepfather telling me that journalists just didn’t make much money. That's all - he didn't tell me, "no." But I was just that weak, and then and there, I decided not to pursue journalism. Not because I was convinced to steer clear of a low-paying occupation, but because of knee-jerk obeisance, because I placed fear and doubt before my own damned life.
Finally, I remember being in the gym at school, well into law school, staring blankly at myself in the mirror doing dumbbell curls. Near the top of the motion of a repetition with my right arm, it struck me – I had never really wanted to be a lawyer. I had never wanted it, dreamed of it, thought it might be a cool thing to do, even for a day. But there I was, in my second year of law school, skipping immigration law to work out and play basketball.
Yet, here I am. An attorney. In the past couple of weeks, I've felt more alive than I have in years, and this time, it's not just mania, not just another short-lived swing of the pendulum. At the same time, it's made it so much harder to focus at my job, to shut down my brain so that I can draft motions, and revise our rules, and prepare for tomorrow's settlement conferences.
Even now, I don’t know where all this is going. I think the idea is just to write something. Because even today, I feel that writing is all I have, that it is not just my only great gift, but that it’s my one calling, the one thing that will make it all worthwhile. For years, those unthinking years of undergrad, those years law school, the years drifting through life in despair afterwards, I lost my way, lost my love, lost my identity, and completely lost myself. But like I said, something in the universe or me has snapped under the weight of all that history and all that unlived life. My bravado is still somewhat imperfect, but it's enough now. I don't know where it'll all end up, but I'm not going down so easily this time. I quit. And I'm just getting started.
Posted by Rob at October 8, 2004 12:21 AM