nin137

I Still Respect Eminem

i know, his latest song, "I'm not afraid" is cheesy as hell. just the way it starts out. i remember listening to eminem in my senior year in high school. then i dropped off from listening to him. i don't know how i got back into him. maybe it was whiteboy7thst.

for months upon months i've thought of writing about my new job. you have no idea how many drafts i've crumpled up and thrown in the wastebasket.

in fact, talking about my life in general for the past few months has felt like that. i don't know what to say so i say nothing. i don't know what to say. i feel as though i have turned into that abominable cog in the machine.

this job is the worst i have ever had in my entire life. i just had a managing attorney try and throw me under the bus. i wouldn't have even have noticed it and acted naively and bowed to the wishes if it weren't for another attorney in my firm who was now being crucified for the sins of another managing attorney who just left.

but here it is. i need the money and i am still optimistically stupid enough to think i can right this ship but i can't. no matter how much i try i realize that i will simply be the scapegoat for the problems of my firm. this firm is corrupt. i wrote it and i believe it. believe you me.

i value this job more highly than any one can imagine. i have gone through unemployment and trying to weather it all on my own as a sole law firm. it is not feasible in these times. i went into this job wanting to love it. so fucking thankful i get a steady pay check. but now i realize that there is simply more that i need to think about. but what do i do? do i go back to the days where my wife is crying in my arms about how we don't have enough money to live our lives? do i go back to those days where i swear to her that i work 80 hour days like a sucker for clients that, no matter how much i make them pay up front i still end up broke with nothing to show for my hard-work? or do i grit my teeth?

i don't fucking know what to do.

i watch this video at least once a day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFxXSXGd4hs
juliann chides me for it. but i love it. it just shows absolute determination above all odds. jordan broke his foot in his second season. he should have been done. for another 6 seasons he labored culminating in his graceful admission of defeat to the pistons. and then finally in 1991 he had his break-through.

allow me to watch it right here.

i have watched that video so many times that i started watching the background audience. in many of Jordan's shots, you see the opposing team just flailing in disbelief. i don't even know where to start or where to end. it is perfection from start to finish.

and i still continue to hold this belief that if i just try my damndest I will succeed. but that is a farce. because it assumes that my opponents hold some relativity to the competition i have to endure. but in law it is not so. if a higher power wishes to scapegoat and destroy you, that's it. so i risked getting fired today for the sole sake of preserving my reputation.

i know i won't get fired. i could trudge on here with the thought that i will become a Trustee at some point, but let's be real. it won't happen. i just kept on thinking, "well only make it work for 2 years and then just move on," but that is no longer feasible. it is not tenuous. i will be strangled before then.

i have to step out of this downward spiral into the abyss that awaits me. for all his oratorical fashion Obama has not delivered. i don't blame him. well maybe i do. you have the power to direct funds. you have the ULTIMATE POWER of dictating the trajectory of the nation. and you have failed ultimately, no matter what your apologists may say. tell me you need more years to undo George Bush Jr.s flaws, but they are all just words.

i sit here in a world of emptiness and i am willing to set foot in it to step out of the quagmire i am in. but am i really? can i be coaxed into a longer commitment through salary? can i emerge unscathed?

i seriously don't know what to do at this point. i never want to go back into the reality where my wife sobs in my arms about our monetary problems. i never want to feel that no matter the effort i put into my work i have nothing to show for it. at least i get a pay check here. but at some point the pay check is not worth it.

as my co-worker said at some point, you can't continue any longer with that which makes you unhappy.

if only the resolution to that conundrum were as black and white as i hoped it to be when i was just sophomore in college.

fuck it. maybe it is.