October 09, 2004

i'm sitting here thinking about how i just finished the first week of doing the work i've been wanting to do for years.

the first week of my idealistic and perhaps unrealistic quest to change the world, one person at a time, and leave it a better place than it was when i found it.

the first week of the rest of my life.

why am i not feeling more satisfied?

maybe it's because i worked about 70 hours this week. maybe it's because i spent every waking hour this week in my office or in a courtroom or traveling from a courtroom to my office or from my office to my house, where i would arrive just in time to fall asleep and then wake up at some god-awful hour in the morning and do the whole thing over again. they don't call our first week at the defender association "hell week" for nothing, i can assure you of that.

i've already prepped over 50 cases for preliminary hearings. i've cross-examined 15 witnesses and gotten 4 clients out of jail by successfully arguing that the charges against them should be dismissed. i've gotten bail reduced in a few cases, and i've set up several good motions to suppress physical evidence. this should all be making me feel awesome.

and on some level it is. i can't deny how cool that is.

so why am i not more content?

maybe it's because i spent the week listening to judges and assistant district attorneys yell at me. and watching stenographers and court clerks roll their eyes at me simply because i choose to fully exercise my clients' rights to cross examine witnesses against them and challenge the prosecution's evidence. and watching police officers laugh at me as i make argument to the judge only to have that argument completely ignored. and realizing that this is going to be my life for the foreseeable future.

it was certainly an emotionally charged week, during which i was constantly operating under high levels of stress and extreme frustration. not to mention very little sleep. i almost cried in court several times as a result of my nagging insecurities, as well as the universal disrespect that was directed at me, along with my clients, by everyone in the courtrooms.

plus, tonight yet another in a long line of mediocre "relationships" (and i use that term loosely) in which i was involved came to an end. this time, the death blow was not dealt by me. a rarity, indeed -- something that has happened only a handful of times, based largely on the fact that i usually spot what i perceive to be major flaws and become annoyed and then disinterested all in the span of a date or two.

i'm not really sad about the fact that i will no longer be dating this particular guy. i mean, he's a wonderful person. i couldn't have asked for a nicer ending -- we had dinner at a restaurant i love (although i still haven't ordered the lobster there), and then we had fancy chocolate desserts at the ritz-carlton. i know that we'll continue to be friends -- i genuinely enjoy hanging out with him. but right away i knew that it didn't matter to me whether we kept on dating or not. i think he felt worse about it than i did.

dating him was just kind of something to do. there was never much of a spark. there never is anymore. and that sure is making me tired.

i'm also tired of looking back all the time. i don't want to stop looking back, but i do wish i could stop looking back so often. or i wish that i wouldn't have to only look back in order to see some of the things that are, as it stands now, behind me. like i wish that maybe they could be in front of me too. or maybe it's best that they're not. i just don't know anymore.

one thing i do know is that i am in dire need of a solid 10 or 12-hour block of stress-free sleep time. so i'm going to go ahead and get started on that right now.

in the meantime, if you haven't already done so, you should really pick up copies of "the tetherballs of bougainville" by mark leyner, and the first couple of books in "a series of unfortunate events" by lemony snicket. they're some of the strangest and most amusing things i've read in a long time.

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