June 28, 2009

Did Law School Kill the Realm?

It is hard to know what has suffered more in the (school) year just past, my personal life or this blog. Needless to say, however, both have suffered dramatically. And while my personal life was never much to write home about—and therefore its faltering nothing to lament—the same cannot be said of the (formerly) illustrious Realm. Once a glimmering bastion of douchebaggery and misanthropy, all that remains today is a fetid cesspool of occasional despair and compulsory self-loathing. It is, in short, a shadow of its former self.

What villainous scoundrel vanquished this most worthless of Internet havens that so poignantly failed to display the utter pointlessness of human existence? Certainly law school would be a worthy contender for this dishonor. Between soul-crushing journal work and lunatic decisions to take four to five substantive courses per quarter, the past year rarely left me with time to pontificate on the meaninglessness of existence. There just was not enough time to appreciate my own material worthlessness. But, I submit to you dear readers, a most dreadful proposition—one that is far worse than the aforementioned. It is with a heavy heart that I must admit that, at least in part, I have failed to write this past year not only for a mere lack of time but also for a loss of inspiration.

With the amount of reading, writing, and (faux) arithmetic (also known as economics) that the past year demanded, also came a decided creative dullness that I could not wake from, no matter how hard I tried. Certainly the crushing work load did not help, but even while working (more than) full time in San Francisco (and traveling frequently), I still managed to keep a steady posting rate. And that's not even mentioning college, where I damn near killed myself trying to squeeze in everything in four years.

Is it just the law? Does the precision and repetition of it all just drive people into a left-brain funk from which they cannot emerge? I find it all rather sad, to be honest. Some of the best writers I know are my classmates in law school. And while no one is going to shed a tear if I stop writing (I suspect a few will rejoice, while most do not even care to notice), certainly it would be a downright tragic if others more talented than I were to be driven into the same somnolence that has consumed me solely because they chose law as a career.

Since second year ended, I have tried to rediscover the muse, but it has been to no avail. In New York the past few weeks, work kept me more busy than law school had in the spring. In London this past week, law school occupied my time even when work did not. The only reason I am writing this right now is because I have a five hour train ride from Edinburgh back to London (and wireless!). I would like to say that this is the post that marks my return, but I would be lying if I said so with any degree of certainty. Where this site goes from here is a mystery, even to me.

Maybe it is only appropriate: maybe the Realm will live, surely it will (eventually) die—at this point, I honestly could not tell you when the death knell shall sound. In that way, the situation is no different than my life (or yours, for that matter). Maybe I (you) will live, surely I (you) will die, and in the end it won't have mattered at all. It is always good to have some perspective.