A Quarter For Your Thoughts

I ended my first six months as a corporate lawyer on Tuesday, April Fool's Day, at a restaurant in the West Village, dining with three other first year associates, raising a couple glasses to the end of the first rotation.

I am one fourth of the way through the plan.

About a month ago, I put in for five days of vacation for this week, thinking that I might go away somewhere and relax. Re-group. For a variety of reasons, I ended up whittling down the days to three and whittling down the plans to an in-town vacation. Yesterday I went to the Bronx Zoo with Joiner and had a grand old time, then browsed the New York section of the Strand bookstore while waiting for Joiner to finish a meeting she had.

Today, because I stayed up until 3 am reading a very irritating and badly written novel, I got up at noon, checked my Blackberry, and worked.

The partner gave me an assignment a while back that no one else is working on, and it of course has all come to a head this week, so my second afternoon of vacation was spent trying unsuccessfully to get my remote office to work on my computer, failing, responding to a dozen emails on my Blackberry, and taking two phone calls.

I felt rather depressed at how the second day of my vacation turned out. This, after having to respond to another work thing yesterday morning.

This is my fault, my inability to switch things off, to turn things over and say, here, I am on vacation, you deal with it. This is going to sound like that stupid thing you say in interviews when asked that stupid question, "What's your greatest fault?" -- "I'd say my greatest fault is my perfectionism, Pat" -- but it marks all us Type As: I don't know how to do a mediocre job. Oh, I'm not saying that I don't turn in crap sometimes. I'm not saying that I try my best, every. Single. Time. No. That's impossible. I'm saying that I feel guilty when I don't try my best. When I turn in crap.

Which is why, really, I can't stay in this job. I've been astonished to find that I at times enjoy working, especially when it involves actually dealing with clients and feeling helpful. But I can't put it away without feeling guilty when something crops up. And something inevitably crops up when I'm supposed to be away from work.

When you can't put it away, you kinda want "it" to be something you enjoy. Something you believe in. Something that you think is worthy of the time and energy. And this just ain't it.

So here I stand, after six months, looking back and marveling at how much better it was than I thought it would be, and looking forward and wondering what the hell comes on Day 731. What I can afford to do. What I owe, to which people. Wondering, as always, how I should lead my life, and what it's all for.
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