I’ll be honest… I’m tired.
This semester of law school started the first week of January and finished Friday. Between school and work, I’ve been going six and seven days a week for 18 weeks.
To say I learned a lot in that time would be a drastic understatement.
I learned about:
• Securities fraud and the ins and outs of Rule 10b-5,
• The EEOC administrative process for employment discrimination claims,
• The ethical rules of settlement negotiations,
• The “few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions” to the warrant requirement (there are 21, lol), and
• How a lawyer should not help a client break into his ex-wife’s house to microwave her cat (I’m serious).
And somehow, during all this, I managed to write a short story. I submitted a new story, and my first foray into legal fiction, for Belmont Law’s Legal Fiction Workshop, and will also be submitting it to the American Bar Association’s Ross Contest for Legal Short Fiction.
I also wrote an essay that will be published in an upcoming collaborative release from Quoir (more details coming soon!).
It was surprisingly nice to have some creative outlets in the midst of learning all the black letter law, so-to-speak.
It’s definitely true that you don’t accomplish something important to you without focus, energy, and lots of saying ‘no’ to other things.
That being said, taking the opportunity to use a different part of my brain—the part that made me fall in love with writing in the first place—felt like a signal that I should be careful not to neglect the pursuits that feed my soul.
This isn’t to say that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed delving deep into the law, but there’s a difference between taking in and breathing out.
The things I’ve been learning about require a lot of soaking in, a lot of repetition, and a lot of letting things settle in. Writing, on the other hand, presents an opportunity to let what’s inside come out, and that’s part of the healing and beauty of it for me.
And this summer, I’m looking forward to writing. I’m looking forward to breathing out.
So thanks for hanging out with me. There’s lots more to come.