seeking heaven that wasn’t here
i haven’t written on this thing for months. so of course, right when i need to be stuffing as much knowledge on torts into my head as superhumanly possible, i decide right now to write a blog post.
it’s been really hitting me over the last couple of weeks that i’ve been wrong, seriously wrong, on how i’ve been approaching things i’ve felt were really important to me lifewise. one of the attorneys i used to work with was one of the senior lawyers at the firm, so he had a lot of experience and knowledge not just on immigration law (he worked for the INS for a long time, too), but on living as an attorney. unfortunately for him, he learned things the hard way, absorbing insights by making some wrong choices and bearing the aftermath.
this attorney was in no way a bad person, at all. i’ve told him this before and i’ll say it now: i can only hope to be the kind of attorney he is. he knows immigration law inside and out, and has very keen instincts on how to proceed with a case and how to work with clients. more than that, he’s a hard, honest worker, and won’t stand for shortcuts simply on principle. that’s admirable to me.
but, and there’s always the cautionary “but” in every story, this attorney found his way only after traversing tough waters. originally he had focused his life so much on work that other vital things, like family and friends, and taking care of himself, were subsumed.
he and i and another attorney ended up being the firm’s official “Night Crew”. we stayed late to get work done, sometimes far later than the other attorneys and paralegals in the office. and then afterwards, we would all head to a local piano bar to relax and, well, self-medicate. it was during these trips out that this attorney sat me down and told me not to do what he did in being a workaholic and nothing else. he told me to find things important to my life and to follow them as much as i could, outside of the law career.
i’d always been fairly single-minded whenever there was something i felt i needed to do because it was right, but often i would become so focused on my goal that i didn’t carefully consider the consequences. my actions were like shaking a strand on a spider web: no matter how intent you are on one strand, the vibrations ripple out to the rest of the web and reach things you didn’t even realize were there, like ravenous spiders for example. i learned this the hard way when i decided to join a full-on protest during undergrad. i found it again while i was working with youth facing the threat of deportations or prison time in juvi. while i was so focused on the end goal, i didn’t even stop to think of the ripples i was sending out in other places, not until those ripples magnified and returned to burn and hack and slash me.
when i moved out to SD, i had a rough time of it at first. i’ve always been a nomad and used to transplanting myself to new places. i also have a lot of family up in LA with whom i did spend a lot of time. but i didn’t realize the depth of my loneliness, being separated from all my lifelong friends and my parents and sis, until law school’s jaws had firmly ensnared me. things eventually became ok, because i remembered what my attorney friend back home told me. i sought out friends and made it a point to hang out with them, as much as possible for law school anyways. i started getting back into web tinkering and messing around with drawing and graphics. i even got to rock out again, at least in video game form, on a bass (thank goodness for Rock Band). and i swore to myself that i was not going to let all of that go. i was looking forward to Spring semester.
now i’m sitting in our school’s mock trial office praying i suddenly evolve the power to absorb law knowledge by osmosis, and i’m wondering if i’ve only shot myself in the foot for keeping my single-mindedness on those life and non-lawschool things, if i’ve pursued them too zealously. i’ve been a bull in a china shop.
my attorney friend was not wrong. i know that in my heart. but the way i’ve been seeking my own heaven here hasn’t been right, either.
PS: thanks USD for giving me all this extra non-time. i really appreciate it.