cheers

:-)

Thank you, Meg, once again.  While strolling through your archives, I came across the observation that "you really don't want to write a negative blog, as you will get a negative readership, and that's a heck of a lot of energy to put into creating more negativity in the world."  What a nice reminder.  So.  Here's to trying to take all of the things I would ordinarily just complain about, and make them into a positive inspire-change type thought. 

By the way.  I know everyone is sick of emoticons.  But I love them!  Especially the smiling ones.  So there! :-) (see how that emoticon tranformed the "so there" from nasty to kind of teasing?)

* * *

Update, 11/3/10:  I found another smart lady talking about the same thing (toward the end of the post she talks about positivity and blogging specifically).  How great is that?

identity crisis

So, today I changed the name of the blog.  I actually wasn't sure what to call it when I first put it up, but I wanted to put it up and had to write something.  So for the last three days, I  have been pondering and rejecting various names, and kept coming back to this one.  But, I feel like taupe and lime needs a little explanation.  It all starts here:

(from the website for Anne Wheeler's movie)

Jiminy Cricket

(probably there should be some kind of credit for this graphic,
but I got it from someone I'm pretty sure "borrowed" it as well, with no credit given)

When I was a kid, I was watching some Disney cartoon, and our friend Jiminy Cricket ended the cartoon doing a voice-over, and said something that I have never forgotten.  It's not particularly profound, though it seemed like it was to my 8 year old brain.  I can still hear his wise-cricket voice, saying, "That's human nature for you.  Never satisfied."  I think this sentiment pretty perfectly sums up what it means to be working in Biglaw.  I'm a junior associate, but I understand this runs all the way up the chain.   

When you're busy, all you want is to be slow.  You're billing 70 hours a week, which means you're working 80.  You're bloated from all the take-out you eat sitting at your desk at 11 pm (broccoli always seems like a good idea, but almost never is).  You wake up in the morning, after 4 1/2 hours of sleep and try to figure out in your head the next time you can sleep more than 6 hours.  Usually it is about 4 days away.  And yet, the expectation is that you will nevertheless turn out perfect work product in a minimal amount of time.  You haven't seen your significant other (awake) in about 2 weeks, and your "weekends" consist of sitting in your home office, listening to your family laugh and play in the next room. And then....

When you're slow, all you want is to be busy.  You're billing 15 hours a week, and 5 of them are made-up pro bono tasks.  You sit in front of your computer from 9 (okay, 10) until 5:45, when you finally decide you can leave and have it still be almost respectable, and then inevitably your phone rings, and you have to stay until 8.  You recognize that 8 is not late, but FOR GOD'S SAKE YOU HAVE BEEN SITTING THERE DOING NOTHING ALL DAY.  You begin to question your existence, because you aren't contributing anything to society, and there is something extra-depressing about reading blogs and online news all day about people who are out there doing things.  It's not that you're not contributing in the make-the-world-a-better-place kind of way (although you're not doing that either) it's that you're not contributing AT ALL.  You find it impossible to pay your bills, because you can always do it later.  You don't make the phone calls you should, you don't e-mail your mother.  It's like the inertia of slowness at work makes it impossible to stay on top of the rest of your life as well.  Then, when you haven't bought the gift/made the plan/paid the bill/called the person back, you can't even blame being busy at work!  One of Kathy's friends actually got her cell phone shut off, and I suspect it was during one of these slow patches.  And on top of all of this, you're stressed out about your hours being low.

Page one

This is the first page of the journal. Every time I make the well-intentioned gesture of buying myself a journal, I stare at the blank first page for a very long time. I often can't write on it. Usually what ends up happening is that I turn the page and start the journal on page 2. I don't think that this is uncommon. But on a blog, it turns out, there is no page 2 to start on, you have to start on page 1. I didn't really think of that when I decided to take the leap and start this blog. Especially since it is, for now, one of those no-topic-general-musing-on-life blogs, which I can't imagine anyone other than my own self, and maybe my girlfriend, reading.

But. I am tired of feeling as though I am stuck in a job I don't like (a lawyer for a New York City Biglaw firm), with no shot at having the job I want (a writer, who works from home). I'm tired of feeling like, for a myriad of reasons, my life is stuck. I'm tired of feeling like happiness is one step away, just out of reach. Then, yesterday, Meg over at A Practical Wedding wrote something quite lovely and jolting about the bravery of facing rejection that has been rattling around in my head since I read it. And so, I am going to attempt to focus on the nearness of dreams, rather than the distance. I will write, even if no one but my own self and, occasionally, my girlfriend reads it.