blog on a receipt

[This post, like so many others, started weeks ago.  Unlike the others, it began on a receipt.  I was incredibly inspired at the time,  but I never got around to finishing this post.  Last Friday night, I spent the evening with these ladies - the fruit of this night in Albany and the blog post on a receipt].

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I am sitting here, writing this post on the back of a receipt.  It's the perfect emotional storm for this girl, who's on a work trip to Albany.  Having recently gone gluten-free (that's a post in itself), I'm happy to "blame" my work meal of choice on a dietary necessity.  It's a BYOB restaurant, and I'm at sea level... which means I can easily consume a bottle of wine on my own, without qualms or apologies.

- Receipt blog (the beginning of gratitude-filled introspection)

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I spent most of last week out in Albany on a (very successful and inspiring) work trip.  We're finally getting to that place where you can see the client transitioning to your side and you really feel like a team.  It's the place where you know the relationship that has been forming organically over the last few months is finally solidifying.  And it's genuine.  It's the best.

Our last night in upstate New York, I was on my own for dinner, which was a welcome reprieve after a day of non-stop presentations.  Yelp is the greatest resource while traveling, and I found an excellently-rated BYOB sushi restaurant within walking distance from my hotel.  Victory.

My hotel was also located adjacent to the Albany Law School, so I wasn't surprised to be seated next to a table of law school girl friends.  I was by myself and had accidentally left my Twilight book at the hotel, so I didn't have a whole to do besides listen to their conversation.  Well, that and consume the entire bottle of wine I had brought with me (it was BYOB after all...).  A couple glasses in, I was engrossed in the story of how one of the girls was so pissed at "Mike" because he didn't call her over Christmas break.  Apparently, she and Mike had been dabbling in being more than friends (and of course, but "dabbling," I mean "diddling").  She had even given Mike her Trust & Estates outline during finals.  Mike never really got Trusts like she did.  She didn't have to do that for him.  And after all that, he didn't even text her once over break.  She really didn't want to go back to class the following Monday.  A la "He's Just Not That Into You," her friends gave her every reason in the book for why she didn't hear from Mike.  Mike was probably just spending a lot of time with his family.  He probably didn't want to bother her while she was with her family.  Yeah, he was probably just being respectful.  He knew how close she was with her family, after all.

The conversation then turned to how good it was to be back and how they had all missed each other, even if it had been nice to be home for Christmas.  The sushi had been gone for awhile (both theirs and mine), and the girls were at that point in the night where they needed to decide whether to order another bottle of wine and go for it or call it an early night.  Unfortunately for the sake of my entertainment, they decided not to order the second (or maybe it would have been their third) bottle, and I was soon left to my own thoughts and the regret of leaving my laptop at the hotel.

I poured another glass of wine (because it would have been wasteful not to). 

We were those girls once.  Hours spent in study rooms and Thursday nights at sushi dinners.  So much angst and advice in each locale.  We (ok, I) also had had a "Mike," Trust & Estates outlines and resentment for the cost of law books.  We too had enjoyed our Christmas breaks, but somehow felt that getting back to school and returning to our group was what really felt like coming home. 

I suddenly missed my girlfriends so badly it hurt.  So, I comprised a group text to tell them where I was and how much my neighbors reminded me of us back in the day.  Then the texts from across the country began pouring in.  And I found myself laughing out loud or outright crying, depending on the text. (The servers at the sushi restaurant thought I was absolutely nuts).  More than any other emotion, though, I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for the girls in my life.  We got lucky.  Really, really lucky.

We're all spread out now, doing very different things with our lives.  Salt Lake to Chicago to (soon-to-be) St. Louis.  There have been heartbreaks and weddings.  Breakups and babies.  Vacations and embarrassment.  Birthdays and come to Jesuses (and other come to Jesuses). We've run marathons and adopted puppies... And I'm amazed at how quickly the time passes.

Those Albany law school girls have so much ahead of themselves, and things are going to change for them like they changed for us.  I hope they know how lucky they are.  With law school, it's easy to lose track of the gratitude in the grueling (there's a "forest in the trees" comment somewhere here too), and at the risk of sounding cliche, or even outright cheesy, my friends were the best thing to come out of law school for me.  Lord knows it wasn't the "being a lawyer" part.  And it certainly wasn't the debt part.

People ask me all the time if I regret going to law school, spending all that money on a career I ended up hating, wasting time learning something I may never actually use.  My answer has always been, and will continue to be, the same: Never.  I met some of the greatest women in the world because of law school, and it wouldn't trade that for anything. 

I love being unexpectedly reminded of what really matters.