Law, unlike many professions (CPA, Teaching ect...do also work on the same model), is cyclical. It follows a strange pattern, all the more strange because I am not sure why the pattern is true. Naturally, CPAs are going to be more busy between February and April 15, Teaching will ebb and flow with the school year and so forth. But there is a cycle-- In the fall, right before Thanksgiving everyone tries to get all their work off their desks and get everything shifted around so as not to interfere with family vacations and children being out of school. In the New Year everyone works really hard to catch up on the things that didn't get done during Thanksgiving and Christmas and then they slow down again during summer and speed up again in August-October in preparation for slowing down for the holidays again.
Just thought I'd share that. It also leads to my next observation: I'm tired of blogging. This business of writing down all this stuff about my legal life is becoming tiresome. I have also become addicted to reading all kinds of other blogs in my "on line" life which is draining my legal work. Plus, a few people are making this less fun for me. Long story short, I'm going to cut way down for a while and the blogs you do get are going to be more philosophical and less lawyer.
Because it is a job, and like most jobs it does become monotonous and that's perfectly fine, because that's life, but it doesn't make for good reading. Trying to turn my life into interesting reading several times a week is getting in the way of my living my life, and in my book that's when its time to say, "thanks but I'm going to take a break." My life, like everyone else's who doesn't live in some pseudo reality of uber wealth or some such, is really about the day in and day out. The rhythm of rising, working, going home and working and going out with your friends and being tired from working.... Becomes boring. (At least to me...) You don't want to hear, "Got to work today and did 5 petitions for child support. Then I called 10 people back and left messages for 5 of them. Then I wrote a complaint. Then I filed some papers. "
And really, there are only so many times that its fun to bitch about people who are incapable of leaving messages, after that it actually starts to bug you instead of making you laugh. And I like to laugh, I am a very happy person.
Which brings me to my philosophical point to ponder for the day:
Do you think human beings are born more happy than sad? One of my favorite philosophy proffs and I used to debate this point continually and he always told me that I was just flat wrong that I believed that people were by nature happier than sadder. I was 21 at the time, and the intervening decade has not changed my mind as he said it would. He believed that we were by nature unhappy... Kind of the "nasty brutish and short" philosophy of life. I always felt that sadness comes from outside influences- guilt, stress, ect... These are all human emotions to be examined and understood and once done, happiness was at the core: the natural state of things. I guess I would concede that some people are not predisposed to be happy, but I do believe happiness is the default setting for humans and that our unhappiness comes from our reactions to the outside world.
I have been called Pollyanna for this. I have been asked "Why are you always so damn happy?"
And I'll tell you- because life is nasty, brutish and short and that's it...you can either react with cynicism, rudeness and anger or you can laugh and look to the little things. I Laugh. I giggle. Lots of things amuse me...oh heck, most everything amuses me. I laugh- sometimes, when the going gets rough, like Kitty from That 70s Show. Most of the time, just because something struck me as absurd. I am in fact, easily amused and I'll take it as a compliment when you tell me that, because this is my life, and its not out of shallowness, nor lack of comprehension, but because I have better and finer things to pay attention to.
Ok, so now there is a tornado headed right for me and so I'm going to go and figure out where to hide.
4 comments:
Glad the tornado missed you. There are several of us who will miss you too, but even so - enjoy your scaled-back blogging, and maybe we'll hear from you every now and then.
P.S.: thanks for the link!
interesting musings!
I agree with you...
People, those who don't have chemical imbalances anyhow, make a choice to be unhappy. Today I found out that I have $1.11 in my bank account. Rather than crying, booo hooo, I chose to laugh. Kind of comical really... my own idiocy is sometimes.
What's the saying? You have to laugh, otherwise you'd cry? Being happy or unhappy is a choice that people make. I too am easily amused... keeps my life fun. I still laugh at the non returned calls, and the fact that another lawyer wrote me a letter about "window shudders", and the silliness that abounds in life all around.
I'm sorry to hear that some people are making your blogging life miserable, and just so you know I enjoy hearing your thoughts... sometimes I think I'm reading my own mind, except expressed more eloquently.
I do understand the monotony of work & how it seems like one day is very much like the next. However, I greatly enjoy your writing, and your anecdotes. As I'm in a completely different field (programming) - I very much enjoy reading about how you encounter people not using their brains in other contexts.
Please don't feel pressured to turn every week into an amusing blog, but continue to tell us about the things you run across that amuse you - sometimes it's hard to find those amusements in your own life ;-)
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