on the first day of Christmas (break)

... I stayed up with my parents drinking wine in front of the fireplace until 2 am (I know this doesn't rhyme with "pear tree," but I got tired of thinking about it).   The equally glorious part is I got to sleep in until 11 am this morning.  My dad is making potato pancakes, and I'm drinking coffee and blogging.  It's really nice to be home for Christmas.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who uses Christmas time as the evaluation point in the year to reflect on what has gone well and what changes I need to make in the coming year.  It isn't a conscious evaluation process.  I certainly don't sit down with a form and rank my experiences one to five, but instead, it seems to be something that just happens on its own.  This year, I had 16 hours of driving for this evaluation process.  16 hours of driving and some really great music.  It was like Pandora had a window to my soul and played all of the songs I didn't even know I wanted to hear.

The conclusion of my evaluation: It never ceases to amaze me the difference a year makes.

I think this can be best illustrated by comparing  last year's Christmas party to this year's.  First, read about last year.  How do you know you've hit rock bottom in law?  When your ranting offends the bartender at the firm Christmas party.  Bartenders have decencies of steel, and offending those decencies is quite the feat.

While I definitely "over-stepped" and succeeded in speaking my mind at both events, the messages were completely different.  Last year, the crux of my rant was that I was wasting my life, my hard work and energy, and I was miserable.  This year, my boss and I got into a heart-to-heart at the bar over tidal wave shots.  I went on and on... and on about how much I love what I'm doing and what an incredible opportunity I have with this company.  I told him point blank that I want to make a million dollars.  My inner Veruca Salt came out a bit, and I may have been embarrassingly adamant.  But the next day in the office, my boss gave me a high five and laughed.  I sheepishly apologized for talking his ear off.  He said, Nic, I want to make a million dollars too.  More than that.  So let's do it. 

It's been a good year.  A really, really good year.

the oyster

I have been waiting for this exact morning for weeks now... my own house, the Christmas tree coinciding beautifully with a Christmas playlist, a certain brown dog, a great cup of coffee with cinnamon and nutmeg, and absolutely zero obligations.  This weekend is my oyster.

Like so many times I sit down to blog, I'm prompted to get back after it because I received a really nice compliment from someone who "loves my blog" and wishes I would write more often.  Thanks Mary.

Also like the many other times I've sat down to write, I don't have a particular topic in mind.  There are so many places this post could go, and suddenly I'm overwhelmed by how much I have to write about.  It's a funny contrast from 15 minutes ago.  The coffee was brewing and the brown dog was eating his brown chunks, and the thought actually crossed my mind, "I don't think I have anything to write about."  Here I am, three paragraphs later, trying to prioritize where this post should go.

Friday morning, I randomly ran into a good friend and mentor (friend first, mentor second) on the corner of 16th street downtown.  I rolled down my window and hollered to get her attention.  She came running over to my car and immediately told me she's moving.  To California.  On Monday.  We haven't seen each other in a couple months, but she is responsible for a huge chunk of my current professional happiness.  Those of you who have heard my "how and why I got out of law" spiel, would know her as opposing counsel in the deal from hell.  My firm represented the borrower and she represented the bank.  Despite having to deal with my intolerable clients from hell, she was always very respectful to me and my team, even at 3 in the morning as we frantically made changes to the documents from hell (see if you can find the pattern here). 

Finally closing day arrived... this is the day you wait for - the day in a young transactional lawyer's career where you're supposed to feel like all the blood, sweat and tears contained in the thousands of pieces of paper spread out on the massive conference table were somehow worth it.  It's the culmination of months (and sometimes years) worth of work.  Even when your clients are nice and appreciative, you deserve one hell of a drink when the closing is over.  When your clients suck... you deserve twelve drinks.  My own team wasn't able to take for me drinks post-closing, and at the end of the day, as I cleaned up the conference table and organized all of my executed documents, blue pens and "sign here" tabs, I silently prayed that somehow all the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed.  Recognizing that I was the only one from my team left, my now-friend asked if she could take me for a drink.  A strong drink.  And I happily accepted.  We've been friends ever since.

She's the one who basically told me that I was on the path to being her in 8 years.  A go-getter attorney who knew early on that perhaps law wasn't the best fit but whose pride (and massive debt) wouldn't let her admit it.  She talked of the entitlement that comes with working ungodly hours in a job you hate - having the house and the car (on top of the law debt) that simply wouldn't allow you to make less than a six figure, big firm salary.  We drank wine and discussed the toll of law on relationships.  We compared the politics of big firms to small firms and acknowledged the "boys club"mentality of the whole "business."  I explained my view of how the law firm structure is inherently flawed, and how associates, partners and clients can never really be on the same team.  She told me that the work doesn't change, and more often than not, the politics don't change either.  Ultimately, her insight drove me to the conclusion that if I couldn't do it now - if I hated the work and the politics kept me up at night now... then I certainly wasn't going to be able to do it for the rest of my life.  So I quit.  And I've never been happier.

To hear my friend say that she quit her law job, packed her stuff into storage and didn't really have a career plan for when she got to California almost made me happier than my own decision to leave law.  She looked great, with excitement all over her face and sheer terror in her eyes - exactly the way she should feel... but she was doing it.  She was giving professional happiness a shot.  You can't win the lottery if you never buy a ticket. 

I don't know if she knows how influential her opinions and insights were on me and my decision to leave law.  Yes, of course, I had the perfect storm of opportunities and I was in the right place at the right time, and have a lot of people to thank for that.  But in the end, I get to do something that I love today because opposing counsel took me for a martini over a year ago and gave it to me straight. 

I wish her a world of happiness and a career where she can succeed simply by working hard and being herself.  The world is her oyster, and it seems she is finally understanding that.