pedestrian words

I'm disappointed in my inability to write a speech with the cache and poetry of, say, "I have a dream."  Alas, my efforts are just so-so, or somewhere in that vicinity.  Of course, current life events surrounding our law school and community do not demand a call-to-arms, or profound consideration of deep things, and five minutes isn't very long to develop any kind of theme in any case.

So I'll have to be satisfied if I deliver the chosen words with poise and appropriate timing, and if my classmates feel I've adequately expressed our collective voice.

I'll relax and start enjoying graduation about the time I'm two sentences into the delivery.  It'll all be downhill from there.

dinner with the plumber

What is the difference between a depending intervening force and an independent intervening force?  And why do I tend to confuse res ipsa loquitur and negligence per se?  Why, oh why, is a dinner guest a licensee and a plumber come to fix my drains is an invitee?

Sitting here in the coffee shop on a sunny Sunday morning, and feeling good.  It's not just that I'm slowly moving the ball forward, inch by inch.  It's having this time, when my world stands still, to have the opportunity to mono-focus, something I never got to do during law school.  I alone structure my day, what gets done is what I do with it.  Lovely freedom, heavy responsibility and abject terror all rolled into one.

the world remains at large

Early morning in the library at school, where I spend my days for now.  I've had my coffee, checked Facebook and email and now nothing remains between me and launching another day of studying.  I've been told by more than one attorney that I should enjoy this time, that there will never be another time like this in my life.

So I shall endeavor to do this- cherish this time, all of it.  I'm alternately fretting about my speech, viewing the mountain of studying to be done with alarm and lost in whatever subject is in front of me, but let me try, try to understand the gift I've been given, and to immerse myself in it.  Tomorrow is tomorrow.

taking applications

I think I need a 'wife'.  The old fashioned kind, that picks up the dry cleaning, cleans house, handles social arrangements and packs my lunch.

I need to breathe.

dog sleds and bar exams

I took the day yesterday to be a tourist in San Francisco, with a particular aim in mind.  In spite of reading thousands of pages of case books over the past four years, I still find that one of the things I do at a break is to tear through a few books for pleasure.  Such an appetite must be fed.  So I went walkabout in search of some independent bookstores, of which SF has quite a supply.

As a result of the day, along with a new blister and some sore muscles, I have several new (old) books.  I'm reading one named 'Sledge' by Martin Lindsay, the account of the first British trans-Greenland expedition in 1934.  The story is one of day after day of unrelenting hard work, boredom beyond belief, and never enough food, never really getting rested.  Ok, I know this is a stretch, but I found myself thinking about law school.  It's not that I was ever underfed during this four year stretch but there are some things to find in common, if you squint so that everything is blurry, and turn off the lights.  Then it all looks like the same thing.

What I would say is that it seems there is a certain satisfaction in attempting something very difficult, and in accomplishing it.  Even though at times during the actual doing of it, you lose sight of the overall purpose and see no reason to keep moving forward other than the fear of being looked on as a quitter, or of feeling about yourself that you must not be up to the challenge- still after the journey is done, you feel such a sense of completion, of knowing you have met the hard thing face on.  Sure, there is probably some self-righteousness in that mix, but it still serves to fuel the next big thing.  Because of course there must be the next big thing.

You wonder why I'm reading this book instead of studying for the bar- well I confess to being a few days behind schedule on that count.  I had hoped to return home on Monday night and commence a two hour per day MBE schedule immediately.  But it has not yet happened, and I'm hoping that my sense of timing and rhythm is not self-delusion.  I confess to feeling uncertain how to proceed without the Barbri schedule as a guide, and to having a list of things still incomplete that I had hoped to have done before commencing.  But I know that if I do not start by Monday, I will begin to be very anxious.  So start I must.  Just after I read the rest of this book.

roll of the dice

These days life feels a lot like a high stakes game of poker, and I'm the only amateur at the table.  I can't even remember whether a full house beats four of a kind, so you can guess how confident I feel about this.  Then again, I do want to play.  Carrying the analogy further than I really should, it's all-in for me.

New things always come with some uncertainty, and changing careers mid-life is no exception.  But I did ask for this, didn't I.  And to be honest, it's also fraught with opportunity for new experiences, new challenges and I seem to be a sucker for such things.

I think I was supposed to be playing Parcheesi.