I Got It!!

I got the job! I don't think I could be happier about it. I'm really excited. Hooray!!! Hopefully this will be the end of my quicksand feelings. I'm doing my best to pull myself out.

'View

I have an interview tomorrow. It's for a clerk position, but I'm still excited. I really want to get out of the job I'm at now. I'm also frustrated with my life and with men and with law and with everything going on in it right now. Is it any coincidence the lotto numbers that just came up were "5150"? The code section for an involuntary psychiatric hold? Is it a bigger coincidence that I happened to see those numbers as they ran across the news screen just now? And I'm frustrated with some of the people in my life who I thought would be more understanding right now than they're being. Or maybe "understanding" isn't the right word. Maybe I don't know what is? Maybe I just need a few good nights worth of sleep in a row and some more perspective. Maybe I need to figure out why these f-ing ants keep coming in my bedroom after seemingly nothing other than to walk around and piss me off. I mean, at least I would get it if they were going after my cats' food or water, or even my hair care products. But they just seem to walk around on clean laundry and across my bed and through my closet. I feel like I'm drowning and like I'm not even being tossed a life preserver by those I've tossed several to before. They're just telling me to go ahead and sink. I really do feel like I'm drowning. I don't know if it's water or quicksand, but I think my head's about to go under and I wonder if anyone would notice.

Workation

I'm back from my Vegas conference. It's a long drive.

The conference was good, and I'm hopeful that the materials are going to be useful. I also hope I made some good contacts there. Nothing would make me happier than to have made a job out of this outing.

I'm just really tired right now.

This week, I've got a summary judgment motion I'm writing and a closing argument brief that I think I'm writing but we may be collaborating on. I believe that I'm doing the facts on that one and my co-counsel is doing the law, but that's not due first, so it's not highest on the list.

I could really just spend the rest of my life as a lotto winner, being stress-less and carefree. My only worry would be where to spend my days volunteering and how to decide where my money could do the most good.

On another note, I'm wondering whether or not I want to call the boy. Call, text, email...somehow contact. I'm wondering if I got caught up, he got caught up, and we could just kind of start over. On the other hand, I'm wondering if I'm insane or something because he did send me an email in which he kind of said something that I didn't appreciate. (If you want details, just ask.)

And then the on again, off again girlfriend of a friend of mine called me today and asked me "woman-to-woman" what the deal was with this guy. Umm... I thought they had broken up. If I were friends with this woman (she and I are only acquaintances), I would be shouting that she could do way better, that he's scum, and that he's a cheating, no good son of a bitch. Since he's the one that's my friend, but I firmly believe in the sisterhood, I told her that she should probably listen to her instincts about whether or not he was cheating. I also did tell her she could do better. She then proceeded to tell me some really private information about him. Granted, I already knew this private information to some extent, but I didn't know the full extent and I don't think it was appropriate that she told me.

I guess why I'm telling you all this now is that I didn't really get to "vacation" at any point while I was in Vegas. I was either in conference or meeting with people and trying like hell to market myself for jobs, and then today when I tried to relax and gamble, I couldn't drink because I was going to make the long drive home AND I got called by one client and this aforementioned acquaintance.

At least I don't have to set my alarm for tomorrow morning. But, yes, I have to work a lot.

So does anyone have any suggestions on whether or not I should call, email, or text this boy? My idea was to just text him and suggest we meet up for a movie this weekend. Thoughts?

All At Once

I suddenly hear Whitney singing in my ears, but somehow the lyrics are different.

All at once, I'm wondering how my life came to look like this. I'm also wondering if it looks the same from the outside in as it does from the inside out.

All at once, I'm praying it was Thursday night already and I was sipping a nice glass of wine with my colleagues in Vegas.

All at once, I'm more intensely wishing I had won the lottery on Saturday night so I could tell my boss I'm never coming back, so that I could take a private plane to Vegas, and I could care far less about trivial things.

I also wish that I could have more money so that my friends who have been there for me in such amazing ways, through the good, the bad, and the law school, could be rewarded in ways they so richly deserve.

I guess this is just all hitting me all at once. This is all at once, now that I'm being replaced by a glorified legal assistant...oh yeah, and I've been asked to train her. But I think I may be blessed - since it has nothing to do with anything in which I have interest, I guess shoving me out of the nest is maybe what I need, as cold and uncalled for as it may be. Who needs a paycheck anyway? I hear it's overrated. Certainly, the student loan companies think it's overrated, right?

Dirty Tricks

I was thinking about all the tricks attorneys play, how you always get a really important motion by messenger (personal service in CA shortens your time to respond) at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, how they always try to back door certain things, and how we (the plaintiff's side) says it's always the defense who does this kind of thing. This got me thinking about my male friend C who does defense work (I suppose everyone has to have one friend who does that sort of thing), and I'm sure he and his cohorts (co-conspirators?) think the same thing about me and my colleagues (whom he surely calls cohorts, co-conspirators, or some other equal rhetoric).

What happened to the days of honor? To when we had a noble profession? When did we all become the kind of lawyers that the jokes were about? My female friend C was mentioning that she thinks the single thing the Bar in her state could do to help lawyers was to cut down on the unauthorized practice of law, to shut down people who are undermining the quality of work that we do, and that doing so would help restore the public faith in our profession. (I apologize if I'm paraphrasing too liberally, C, but I believe that's the crux of it.)

When I was on the courthouse steps, some guy told an in pro per/pro se defendant "don't pay no evil lawyer to help you! I can help you right around the corner!" Excuse me? When you mess up this poor guy's life, and he really needs a lawyer, and you find yourself in jail and you need a lawyer for yourself, and you both end up paying lawyers far more than if the one guy had just gotten a PD in the first place and you had just gotten yourself either (a) a real job, or (b) a law degree and a bar card yourself, that's the kind of thing that makes people hate lawyers! Yes, we sometimes laugh at your idiocy, and damn it, it's our right. Suffering through law school and particularly through the bar exam has earned us the right. But when you make a mockery of all we've accomplished and then come to us expecting us to help fix it, it's not just distasteful, it's downright offensive. Cutting down on the unauthorized practice of law is high on my priority list too.

But once you have the bar card, I guess you can engage in all the dirty tricks you can figure out under the rules and some that are blatantly not under the rules but infrequently get punished. I even have a few of my own. If that sounds ominous, maybe it should. :-)

Mission Accomplished

So I got my game back from Liar Liar Pants on Fire. He came to my car where I was waiting while reading deposition testimony. He opened the passenger side door and handed it to me. I said "thank you." He said "you're welcome, and I hope your case is going well and...uh...it's good to see you." [Long pause waiting for me to say something...which I didn't.] "So you'll definitely be hearing from me...[long pause]." "Bye."

I wonder I'll actually be hearing from him or if I was being too subtle. You know, for some guys, you have to hit them over the head with this kind of stuff.

I mean, I didn't even get out of the car or respond when he said it was good to see him.

Here's the thing. He's 40 and divorced, drives a crappy car, and lives in a crappy neighborhood. I'm in my late 20's, a lawyer, have a respectable car, and am fabulous in my own right. If he can't see that, it's his loss. And as I was listening to KROQ this morning, it's absolutely true - loser guys can be with great girls all the time, but it's the guys who can't seem to get past anything superficial. Their dumb loss.

Liar and Waste

Enough said, I think. At least I decided early enough on that he's a waste. Damn my desire for evidence! LOL