Performs Above Expectations

On Friday night, I left work late, near midnight. On my way out, I saw a white cloth-covered table in front of the conference rooms on my floor, ready for putting out the name tags and firm goodies for the first year class starting on Monday.

It sort of stopped me in my tracks.

I wandered into the conference room and looked over the rows of messenger bags with the firm logo, the red emergency fanny packs that all New York firms now give their employees, the neat folders with the names of the fresh young graduates on them, and felt a painful sympathy for the hk who walked to work so reluctantly on October 1, 2007, and was the last person to arrive, and picked up her messenger bag and her name tag from that white cloth-covered table in front of the conference room on floor 20.

Staring at the materials set out for the first years, I had a Talking Heads moment. This is not my life! This is not my beautiful wife! Or is it?

The coming of the first years coincides with my annual review, which I had had earlier that day. In it, the partners gave me some nice compliments, which included telling me that while the firm policy is never to give a first year associate an "EA" rating (inexplicably, for "Exceeds Expectations"), when my name came up in the personnel committee meeting, the partners had a discussion of why they don't give out that rating to first years and whether that made sense.

It was gratifying.

It was nice.

It was mildly horrifying.

Why?

Because! What if I really was born to be a corporate lawyer?

I freely admit: the firm gets an EA rating from me. I don't wake up every day wishing that I could do anything but go to work. There are bad days, bad weeks sometimes, but overall, the people are nicer and more interesting than I thought they would be, and the work is more interesting than I thought it would be. But even so. A year of liking work more than I expected to does not blind me from the fact that what I do as a corporate lawyer is monkey work, involving little creativity and adding very little value to human existence. It is one of the great injustices of life that a job so meaningless pays so well.

I have been a good corporate lawyer my first year. I've been conscientious and thoughtful and I have projected an air of confidence. I've approached my work with a level head and I produce good quality work. My work is clean and well thought out and I'm almost never flustered or annoyed. I am professional, poised and I show good common sense. I am a good team player and I am dedicated to the team. I show a genuine interest in learning about the practice.

This is not my life! And this is not my beautiful wife!

It's like I've entered some bizarro world, but a world that's sad for me, because as it turns out, I'm really, really good at monkey work.

This too is the year in which I have written less in this forum than ever before in the six years I've been keeping a blog, and why? Am I less self-absorbed? Perhaps I have less time to be. And there are so many other venues in which to self-express: on Facebook, everyone writes their own stories, dozens of times a day, in updating their statuses: hk is hating due diligence. hk is looking wistfully at pictures of the Sierras. hk is looking forward to the weekend. hk is two weeks away from going to Hong Kong. hk is in maine, ogling green-eyed coffeehouse boys. hk is getting reviewed -- and has been found lacking. hk is wondering where it all goes, and what it all means.

Along with the decrease in writing came another change over the months -- I'm less concerned about money than I used to be. I still won't use a foreign ATM, but I will think about something, decide it's not worth the hassle, and throw money at the problem. Less time and energy to vacillate has led to a more decisive me. Sometimes.

I grow tired, and make less sense. I was at work 9 hours yesterday, and went to sleep at 3 this morning. But I wanted to mark this day, just as I will mark October 1 as the anniversary of my career as the corporate lawyer, and pose the question: Is this my life? Is this my beautiful wife?