I wish I was like you, easily amused

I have a friend Tina. She’s a journalist at one of the big newsmagazines. She also keeps a blog. I love the way she writes. Tina and I have an interesting relationship. We were in the same magnet programs in middle and high school. I guess you could say we were friends throughout high school. I don’t know that we ever hung out outside of school, but we had many of the same classes and had many of the same friends. She was obsessed with the Backstreet Boys. I was obsessed with not appearing as if I were a nerd.

We both had xanga accounts and then livejournal accounts. Being the stalkers that we both are, we read up on each other’s lives. Then somehow during one of the first two years of college we started getting into intense online conversations about anything and everything. The Darfur genocide. The perkiness of Victoria Beckham’s fake boobs. Like I said, anything. We would bounce different ideas off of each other and we even started a short lived blog with the theme being our shared contempt at the Asians who didn’t think we were “Asian enough” because all of our friends didn’t also have yellow skin. Quite clearly those were heady times. Funny thing is, I’ve seen Tina in person maybe five times since college started. And yet she is one of the few people I actually talk to about things that matter. I mean, she might not even really exist. Maybe she’s just be my own private JT Leroy. Ha, but I digress…

A while back, Tina wrote a post about, well, I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. Idealism. Inspiration. Hope. Dreaming. Righteousness. Doing something that matters. It’s something along those lines. I’d link to it, but she’s paranoid and its password protected. So, basically you have to know her and she has to like you and then maybe you’ll get to read it. It couldn’t have been more than 600 words, but for some reason it really struck a chord with me and kind of inspired me onto a mini soul searching/baring analysis of my future.

I’ve been told by a few friends in law school that I would love it. I have a love of useless knowledge and apparently law school gives out a lot of it. I’ve also been told by some lawyers that I should run far away from it, or at the very least be 110% sure that I want to be a lawyer. And then still reconsider whether or not I want to be a lawyer. That was the rationale for taking a couple years off to work. As it happens, I ended up in a law firm. I have been working for less than a year, but already I know that I want to be a lawyer. It’s something I know I will be good at and something I doubt I will easily tire of. See, I have no problem with the mind numbing minutiae and details that are the job of a lawyer. I don’t know if I’d go so far to say that I enjoy it, but I thrive on details.

I lost my idealism a long time ago. I highly doubt I’ll go into public interest or criminal law. It just isn’t for me. Plus, I’ve become used to a certain standard of living that a lifetime in public interest probably won’t afford me. I guess we can thank my parents for that. Family law is out of the question because I refuse to be involved in divorce cases. Won’t do it. There’s something unsavory about it to me. So really, that leaves my options to the big corporate law firms, like the one I’m working at now.

I have no problem with this at all. It’s something that, as I said earlier, I know I can be good at. It also pays ridiculously well. The situation really isn’t as bleak and depressing as you might think after reading this post. I’m happy with where I’m headed and isn’t that the most important thing anyway?

A family friend who experienced the whole big law firm grind of billables, 80 hour work weeks and no weekends once told me that her worry for me was that I would be too good at playing the corporate game and get too caught up in the ladder climb. I wonder if that’s true. I wonder if I’ll give away part of my soul in the upward scramble. I’ve been in the thick of it since the 4th grade gifted and talented program to the magnet programs to the honors programs in college. I’ve been programmed to constantly be competing against others. But I think I’ve done a pretty good job with saying the fuck with those expectations and the competition, I’m just going to worry about me and not what those around me are doing. I’ve found that my life has worked at more than pretty well by sticking to that. Hopefully that translates into the working world.

My other issue is whether any of this will all matter in the end. My job will, in one way or another, be to facilitate the flow of large amounts of money from one rich person/entity to another. I already assist in that in my current job. But, doing this job kind of makes you wonder why the whole profession of corporate lawyer is even necessary. Then you realize how stupid some of the clients are and realize this job is so necessary just to keep the world going. Money makes the world go ’round, but the lawyers make sure the money actually gets to where it’s supposed to get. Sometimes in some very round about and unsavory ways. But I suppose we can call it a necessary evil.

The thing is, I know what it feels like to work on something that matters. The adrenaline rush. The energizing feeling of waking up in the morning even though you are still so exhausted from the previous day. The pure joy that comes from mission accomplished. I know what it feels like to work on something that matters. In the last eight or so months in this job, I’m not sure I’ve gotten that feeling once. Is this just because I know I’m just sitting in a holding pattern at the moment until law school comes or is this what its like from here on out. Hopefully its the former. I’ll find out soon enough.