Virtual Flaneurism

I'm coming towards a bit of a crossroads right now, and I am going to unfairly subject you to having to read about it. I've been having a bit of a lousy week, compounded by the fact that my summer externship is coming to the end and I'm becoming convinced I might not return to law school in the fall. The law has not turned out to be what I imagined it was - not the avenue towards effecting change I was looking for - and I've found myself lamenting my exit from teaching more and more as the year and the summer goes on. Just this morning I was swarmed by a mass of Aryan-looking preschoolers on the Metro and felt my heart leap from my chest, wishing I was on the way to a field trip with my gaggle of four year olds rather than off to the office. There are a half dozen tabs open on my work browser at this very moment outlining admissions requirements to M.S. of Education programs; after a year of doing "something else", the thought of going back to school (as a teacher and as a student) is like the promise of a cold shower in August.

I dated someone a few months ago who loathed his job (a lawyer) but couldn't seem to think of an alternative to this career that he disliked. We actually spent a good amount of time picking through the issue, trying to figure out what, if anything, he could do with his life. I pushed him to think of crazy things, irresponsible things, absolutely impossible things; what would he do if he had the time, the money, and the ability. After several dates of the same complaints and the same suggestions, I found that the most I'd dragged out of him was a lukewarm desire to move to Paris and maybe purchase a bike. Soon after he became a guy that I dated, rather than one I was dating, and this was likely part of why. His discontent over his job didn't faze me - I find my favorite people are those who are introspective enough to be constantly questioning and changing what they're doing - but I couldn't get a handle around his dearth of personal ambition, his lack of any aspiration. Part of me just cannot believe that someone could not have any dream: I personal have so many things I would do with my life that I find myself constantly mourning the ones I've left behind, lamenting that I can't horcrux myself into seven bodies who can teach and write and act and play and all those wonderful things I keep tucked away in my back pocket. I find myself viewing a lack of some dream - even if it's just a pipe dream - as a sort of self-defeat, a retreat away from yourself. It is easy to stay unhappy; it is terrifying to jump into change.

I've been surprised by the number of discontent people I've found since moving to D.C. I adore the District, and feel like my puzzle piece fits more snugly here than it ever did in New York. Still, I can't shake the realization that so many people here (and, to be fair, New York was no different) are unhappy with what they're doing. The District and New York seems to be overflowing with people on the verge of leaving or dreaming about changing their scenery. I imagine escape (or thoughts of it) is the human reaction to discontentment, and I behave no differently: whenever I was feeling upset and friendless in New York, I'd go for a run past the factory ruins on the Brooklyn side of the East River and daydream about taking an unannounced and unexpected trip to Egypt. In my daydream I'd vanish inside a sandy, mahogany-walled bar and sip beer from a stein while my friends and family wracked the globe for any trace of my whereabouts. I've revisited that particular escape dream a couple times since crash landing in the District, a dream that is less about my desire to visit Northeast Africa and more a yearning to vanish into my unconscious mind's idea of ultimate anonymity. But I never do take this escape, never have gone to Egypt, and these daydreams are just a detour to my actually reckoning with the issue. I worry that someday I'm going to find it easier to live in the dream of escape, and let my real dreams fade around me.

As I said, it's been a lousy week, and I've been searching around for someone and something to distract me. Fittingly, I find the friends who have helped me the most seem to be the ones who appear most content. In turn, I've been surprised by the number of people whose company has provided less of a distraction, getting me out of my funk, and become more of a mirror reflecting back my present feelings of uncertainty.

A disjointed reflection: Back in February, or May, or some abstract point after our January grades arrived, I found myself so disillusioned by my law school classes that I checked out and started posting to this blog. To my friends' (vocalized) chagrin, this often occurred during classtime, where those in neighboring seats wanting to pay attention were blssed with an endless stream of knights riding narwhals flashing across my laptop screen (surpringly - or perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the absolute fickleness of law school marks - my grades appear to have been completely unaffected by my choice to ignore class lectures and roam the blogosphere).

My tuning out was coupled with unpredictable rants to these same friends about what I felt was the arbitrary nature of law school. In retrospect, I was a large pain in the patoot for the majority of the spring semester and shouldapologize to most of these friends for not dropping me like two bits at a Kansas auction. One instance in particular, I remember raving about something - undoubtedly a competition of some kind that unnecessarily pitted me and my classmates for some meager board membership - and getting snapped at by a friend.

"Just because you don't like law school," he said, "doesn't mean that it isn't important to a lot of US."

This is absolutely true, and again, I fully regret making my friends the victims of my personal crisis for a several month long block. However, my response (bitter and spiteful and overly righteous as it was at the time) I believe was equally on target:

"I was just saying how I feel," I said. "If it bothers you, then maybe you have doubts about law school yourself. If you were convinced that what you were doing is right, then my opinion would mean jack shit."

Edison said that restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. I think that is true, as long as you don't roost there. Discontent is only useful if it gets you to change. So many people have told me that law schools is atrocious, that law internships are mind-rending, that the first years of working as a lawyer are exhausting and often lack a meaningful return investment (besides the cash). However, they say, on the horizon there is a better job. I just don't believe that anymore. I am not willing to risk wasting my life, which I know could be happy, on a promise that could be little more than an adult version of the telephone game. And I wish more people would talk - talk to anyone, talk to me, talk to themselves - about why they're discontent, because I know the only way I get through this crap is by flapping my gums at anyone and everyone who will listen. So many people around this place seem unhappy, but everyone seems so unwilling to really do anything about it.