Things are in flux. If this were a dramatic film written by your average hack screenwriter, it would be the part right before the montage, where the hero has that moment of doubt or learns a lesson, or reaches deep inside themselves and finds...something. Only my life isn't a dramatic film, it's more a dark comedy. So there won't be a montage, but if I'm lucky maybe I can get Morgan Freeman for the voice over on the DVD. Or at least Keith David.
If you read this ...thing I'm doing, you know that at the end of every semester three things happen. First, as finals loom all law students start to wonder why they're putting themselves through the madness that is cases and rule application (and why nobody can use plain english). Second comes the finals, which are either not as bad as you imagined or leave you in a stupor as you stagger out of the room. And finally, comes the waiting for grades. That long period swings between brash confidence because you know you nailed it and self doubt because you just realized something else you could have added or should have changed. It's a vicious little cycle that repeats again and again until get to take the bar.
This semester in summer school one professor is threatening to bring Thursday night drinking back into vogue, and the other class is once a week so it feels like I've barely even been there. The semester feels so short I almost wonder if this will really count. I feel strange.
Then grades for last Spring came out. And suddenly I'm wondering why I'm doing all this.
Don't get me wrong, grades were very good. I didn't get the fanciful A out of that litigation class, but I did pass, so now I could be less than twelve months from graduation. And as its all starting to crystallize, to become reality, I'm looking at the whole thing with a skeptical eye.
If you read back far enough, you know I started school for the wrong reasons. It wasn't a love of the law, to help people, a desire to right the wrongs of man or even something as selfish as just making more money that got me in the door. I went to school to occupy my time, and to keep my mind from going off track after Sporty left. I'm good at that - crafting a character to play and then finding way to inhabit it on the way to self renovation. The me right now is a work in progress, with the new education, the weight loss and the inversion of my social persona. And it worked, for a minute. But then, the unexpected happened. And I'm a hopeless romantic. (Read that any way you want)
Now I'm in the fourth quarter, and LeBron I'm not.
The question is what comes next? I got way too comfortable plucking them chickens. Now I'm about wander into the wilderness with a gleam in my eye towards conquer... just because.
I had no illusions that getting a law degree would magically change my life overnight. Maybe had I attended full time, been immersed in the whole process I might have a different viewpoint. Not that I haven't grown to find it's nuances a worthy challenge, and can now better appreciate the craft. But as it stands, I've gotten a degree in exile by going part-time. Exile meaning I cut out a great deal to focus on what needed to be done. And it's looking now I'm going to stay in exile for a while trying to get something started in this new profession. Which is anathema to one my pillars of existence - I don't really enjoy being alone.
So what comes next? Not just school wise, or career wise, but in relation to life. There has to more than...just this. Than just me. Isn't there?
Barkeep, strongest thing you got. And light it on fire.
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