Transitions are odd. Given a choice I'm a night person, unless I have to work at night, then I'm a morning person. I don't really drink coffee, unless it was free and I was at the office. Now that I don't have an office, I'm thinking of getting a coffee maker. I need focus and self discipline, and I shouldn't have expected them to just suddenly pop into existence. Or should I have? It's only been a week. It's a transition. At least that's what I keep telling myself.
Would I be happy as a lawyer?
Sporty asked me the other day, a question I really hadn’t thought about. That question is the the title of this post - will I be happy being a lawyer?
I make no bones that applied to Law School on a whim, and then actually made the move to go only because it looked like Sporty had moved on and I needed something to occupy my time and my mind. It’s not the first time I’ve started something for less than completely pure reasons and later developed an interest. But that concept made me think about something else that I don’t usually consider about myself.
I’m a fairly intense person.
To look at me, to observe me, to know me you probably wouldn’t believe me when I say that. I’ve cultivated a strenuously casual demeanor, something I’ve been working on to mitigate my “dark side” since I realized I have a tendency to go overboard when I get involved... in pretty much anything. I liked reading as a child, so I read everything under the sun. Westerns, Romance, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, How-to, Horror, Novels, etc. I played organized football, and was that wild eyed screaming lunatic always a little too into the game that my coach would have referred to as - agile, mobile and hostile. I’ve had employers where I was willing to put in nineteen hours days if the job called for it, and with my last employer I nearly worked myself into the grave. Those things I do, I do with a passion. As I’ve said before, I think of my approach to things as being like that of a freight train, slow to start, but a force to be reckoned with once moving.
It’s been three years. So I’ve kinda gotten into this law thing.
That and there are so many things you can do with a law degree, so many types of lawyer you can be. Or even if you don’t take the bar, as I discussed with a classmate, there are things you can do with just a Juris Doctor. It is an advanced degree. The field is wide open for career opportunities. I'll have more tools.
But happy?
The things that make me happy can’t be earned. I can’t really work towards them, or build up a bank to use later. They aren't something I can hone, or develop, or anything I can buy. The things that make me happy have to be given to me.
Love. Friendship. Compassion.
It’s an odd concept. I don’t want to call myself gifted, but those things that can be mastered I have tendency to eventually get a grasp of. I have persistent quality and a great degree of patience, so it comes. Eventually. Most times. It is the intangibles that interest me, that drive me, that make me. And in those situations what I'm counting on mostly is luck of the draw. Damn shame.
So, will getting to the end of this make me happy? Oh, I'll be an effective lawyer, of that I'm certain. Like any other skill, given a little time I will start to get a handle on the nuances and shades that make a good counselor, and mature into legal hardwood.
Happy? Barkeep...how about a small whiskey, and just bruise it a touch with some Sprite. Happy?
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