Feast and Famine

Having been at my job for almost two years now, I've made it past a few of the professional growing pains. One aspect of becoming acclimated to the work is getting use to - or at least, learning to expect - the feast and famine nature of work as a litigator. The work schedule is driven by the discovery, pretrial, and trial schedules. When it rains, it pours. Nearly any litigator will tell you that the intensity of work has its ups and downs. Harder to convey, however, is just how violent those ups and downs are, and no words quite do it justice. Still, there are some things to be thankful for.

Any year in which the billables stack high during the first half of the year is good. It's better to hit your minimum billables early enough in the year so that Thanksgiving and the winter holidays aren't sullied with the background worry about having enough work. It's the winter season that's more fun - skiing and snowboarding, baked foods, warm tea, family get-togethers - all these are more pleasant without the nagging undercurrent of work stress picking at the seams of a quilt of cozy feelings.

A number of discussions with other associates outside my firm have also confirmed one of Townsend's points of pride - a good, emotionally healthy workplace. Most of my stress comes from the volume of work. Still, I'd have to admit that generally speaking, the heavy hours come with the territory. What I haven't had to suffer through is any real quantity of office drama or politics. Sure, it's there - but on the whole it's not too bad. It's certainly nothing that would drive me to leave the office to seek work at another firm.

I also have this weekend off. No work - I'd forgotten how nice it feels to do absolutely zero hours of work in a 48-hour period. I've caught up on some sleep and had a good day at wushu. I haven't had a weekend like this since the year started, and this has been really nice. I haven't felt human in a while, and it's a relief.

Personal truth for an Enneagram 1:

Why value honesty? Honor? Sincerity? Fairness? Humility? Why value the things that hold you back from taking what you want out of life? Why even indulge in the doomed attempt to live up to an impossible paradigm, a standard which sneers at the inevitable failings of your mortal efforts and so parsimoniously dismisses all appeals to cosmic justice by saying, "virtue must be its own reward"?

Because some things hold value even in the absence of happiness or contentment.

Because if you spend a lot of time alone, you must absolutely be able to live with yourself.

These young'uns, deys funny

Just over a week ago, I was hanging out with some of the current generation Cal Wushu folks. I mostly just sat around and watched their antics, feeling more than a little too old to fully join them in their scarcely post-adolescent youth. They're a funny bunch.

Present: two girls, at least seven guys. Four of the guys are intermittently wrestling each other and acting rather generally gay (I don't use that as a perjorative, I mean that as a descriptive). Including - reaching down each other's pants, assuming suggestive positions, etc.

So much so that one of the girls took it upon herself to interpose herself physically between two guys to keep them apart from one another (on a large leopard-spotted... er, bean bag, for lack of a better understanding of the large and garish piece of... furniture), and the two guys basically rolled right over her to get back to their play wrestling.

So much so that the one openly gay male in the room, who was watching the antics but not participating, shook his head and pronounced, with mock gravity tinged with a shade of deadpan, "I feel straight around you guys."

On the way back, one of the guys asked me, "Are you ok? I hope you weren't freaked out." To which I could only say, "No, it was just... unexpected. I had a consumingly academic undergrad, and basically missed out on a normal college experience, so I'm just wondering whether this is the sort of stuff that I missed out on, way back then. I have no point of reference."