The Job

I like to make it a policy on this site never to talk about what goes on at my job or to mention where exactly I work, other than to say I'm a lawyer and have a lot of contact with the criminal justice system. I do this because a) as a lawyer I have a lot of confidentiality issues to worry about, and b) I really don't want a lot of the crap that I blog about coming back to haunt me someday. But I find not discussing work to be very challenging. I don't keep up this blog under any illusion that it's great art or that it's changing the world in any significant way, or that I'll ever actually make any money doing this sort of thing (although I have to ask, would it KILL you people to click on the Google Ads once in a while? I get paid for that, you know). I do it for the same reason that every other blogger does it--because we have to. It's a creative outlet, our own voice crying out in the wilderness, a cheap therapy session whenever you want it. It can be wonderful, but the fact that the primary purpose of this blog is to provide me a pressure release makes it very difficult not to discuss specifics about work, since work is so much a part of who most of us are.

One thing I can say about my job is that, like a lot of jobs for attorneys, it can be the world's most brutal roller coaster ride. I guess this is because my job involves so much work in open court which is, by definition, working in public. No matter what you've accomplished in the past, it's hard to escape that feeling that you're only as good as your work on the case you just finished. Because of this, some days you will feel like you're hanging by the thinnest of threads and can't possibly make it to the end of the week, and the next day you feel unstoppable, like a child of destiny ready to take on the whole world.

Today was one of my good days, one of those "child of destiny" days. I wish I could give you the details, but suffice it to say that this is one of those days when I feel like I'm really doing some good in this city. Tomorrow things can (and probably will) feel completely different, but in a career like mine the only way to handle the tough times is to savor the small triumphs. It's frustrating beyond belief sometimes that I can't use this space, my personal outlet, to talk about the aspects of my job that are so important to me. But I am secure in telling you that I think I made a difference today, and that feels pretty good.