March 22, 2010

Law School Casualties (and a Chance at Redemption)

As my law school career winds to a close—I am eight-ninths of the way through as of last week—I finally have a moment to survey the carnage that has been wrought in my life over the past three years. It's not a pretty sight.

At the top of the list is, of course, this website—the once illustrious Realm, now a mere shadow of its former self. As I observed last year, where it has gone and whether it will return remain open questions even today. But the body count does not stop with a profoundly silly website, its decidedly useless content, or its consummately worthless author; the death toll has been far greater.

My sanity (as it were) hangs by a thread. Gone is the sense of home, the sense of purpose—hell, even the sense of reality. All that is left in its place is irrational obsession, misguided misanthropy, and (of course) unending despair.

None of my hobbies have credibly survived the past three years, nor have I consistently kept up with any sort of physical activity. It's almost as though everything has been on hold for the past three years, paused as one might pause a video. And in the interim, it has been law school, all day every day, with little respite save the occasional alcohol-soaked walk home (alone, and in the dark, of course).

But all these casualties of my law school experience pale in comparison to one: I have stopped reading for pleasure. Always the utter bookworm since I first learned to read, I used to consume books as a child and never quite gave up the habit in college or while working. But in law school—and especially over the last year—the required reading, whether for class or for journal, was overwhelming. The thought of picking up a book—especially the dense sort of fiction that I prefer—was enough to consume me with fatigue.

With the end of law school on the horizon, however, the pause might be wearing off. As I get ready to move on with the shards that remain of my (necessarily futile) existence, I realize that I can no longer engage in the single-track pursuit that has consumed my life over the past three years. Nor do I want to, really. While such determined pursuits can perhaps be justified while in school (though probably not even then), doing so at work in my experience is solely a recipe for brutal and all-consuming existential angst.

So, the time has finally come to reemerge from the law school cave (and about time too!). To that redemptive end, I have chosen a goal for myself: read two books—for fun—by the end of my spring break (a week from yesterday). Will I accomplish that unambitious goal? Hopefully. Otherwise, I fear a lot more misery than the usual is likely to await me in the not-so-far future.