A bit of a hiccup

Obviously there has been a bit of a temporal hiccup in my postings of late. I blame leaving New Orleans, graduating from law school, moving to Minneapolis, studying for the bar, taking the bar, and my present daily panic attacks for my absence. Life is okay, but odd, up here up North, living with the family again.

I've been reading again, real books not law books, and it has been at once exhilirating and depressing. I remember reading pre-law school, pre-bar study, and I remember it being fun and rejuvenating and inspiring. Now, it is still those things on occassion, but it kills me that my attention span has been destroyed by months of cramming. Bar exam studying, for those who have had the pleasure of not experiencing it, involves 7-10 hours a day (on light days) of learning, re-learning, memorizing, practicing, outlining, graphing, comparing, digesting, and beating various rules, theories, and tests into an unwilling brain. It is impossible to learn everything that can be tested so you become a master at focusing on the key points, the big tests, the most logical outcomes, which means you skim ridiculous amounts of material very, very quickly. This works well for the bar exam. It does not work well for experiencing Susan Sontag's In America or anything written by someone other than a law professor. I have to remind myself to slow down, to read every word, to picture and imagine each sentence. I have to reacquaint myself with READING, for pity's sake. READING. This is me. Reading has been my greatest escape since I was five. And now I've lost it, or temporarily misplaced it. Very sad. Very pathetic.

I am in limbo these days. I don't know if I've passed the bar and won't until October, so finding a job is difficult since I'm unable to practice law until I'm licensed. And the job search itself is painfully complex since I'm interested in many things, some which require bar passage and some which do not. I'm not emotionally invested in the idea of practicing law. Litigation seems interesting enough but from my perspective today it doesn't thrill me. I'm curious about transaction work and feel I'd be good at it but curiosity seems a strange thing upon which to base a career. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the search is talking to people about what I'm interested in. It's odd, when you talk about going to law school, everyone applauds the choice because law school "opens so many doors" and there are "so many opportunities" to use the degree OUTSIDE the practice of law. This is quite true, to an extent. But these days, if I mention pursuing positions outside the realm of Law & Order or The Firm I feel like I'm met largely with cocked eyebrows and questions as to why I don't want to practice. It isn't that I don't want to practice, it's that I'm very interested in many non-practicing career paths. Why is that so hard for some people to digest? And more importantly, why do I care?

Tuesday I'll be headed to Katherine's wedding in California. It's odd to think it's happening, that such milestones have finally arrived. I remember when she called me to tell me Nathan proposed. I was in Little Rock, after Katrina (there's an earlier post about it somewhere), and I was in bed staring at the sparkly stucco on Mamaw's ceiling. When I saw Kat's number pop up on my cell I knew she was engaged. I just knew that was what had happened. It was so nice to have a slice of celebration during those months of waiting and watching the news. And now The Day has arrived. A week from today she will have been married for over 24 hours. Life happens so fast. Sometimes I wish it would slow down so I could breathe a bit. But some days, like today, I wish this year would be over, wish I could skip ahead 12 months and have the reassurance of knowing I'm employed and possibly happy and living somewhere fulfilling (here or elsewhere). But then I'd miss Kat's wedding, and who knows what other happy moments, so it's a wish that I don't mind God ignoring.