Real Words

When I first wrote up my personal statement for my application to law school, I struggled over every word, trying desperately to fit the nuanced details of a life full of changing decisions in to what amounted to a five-paragraph essay. In the copy of my first draft of the paper which I have tucked away in to a scrapbook, there is a bulleted outline of my working life. It reads:

· Age 15 – began full-time employment at daycare

· Age 16 – receptionist at civil engineering office

· Age 17 – dropped out of high school, certified in massage therapy

· Age 18 – traveling portrait photographer

· Age 19 – founded non-profit working with incarcerated adults

· Age 21 – developed literary magazine for said non-profit

· Age 22 – group home staff worker

· Age 23 – completed manuscript about group home staff experience

· Age 23 – certified in therapeutic in-home foster care

· Age 24 – finished four year college degree in two years of full-time school

I remember staring down at that piece of paper and thinking that all it looked like was a litany of, “I started and then I quit, I started and then I quit”. I hadn’t even bothered to list the numerous bookstore, barista, babysitting and bartending jobs I’d begun and then backed away from off and on and off and on throughout the duration of my short life.

Staring at the list, I put my pen to the page and began to scrawl. I wrote lines and lines about why I had left each job that I had started. It was probably the most cathartic writing experience I had ever had in my life. I learned, through a close look at my own ebbs and flows, about the motions of my own internal alterations. And what I saw when I looked at the final pages summarizing my life was that I was not someone who always started and quit things. Instead, I was a girl who was not afraid to say that something wasn’t working for me anymore and to move on to something else which might. I was a girl who was interested in having as many new experiences as she possibly could and being okay with letting one lead in to the next.

In the end, I sized that multi-page self-realization in to a concise description of why I would be able to meet the challenges of law school with an efficiency and dedication which would wow the school’s staff and make marks upon the world around me. The funny thing was that despite those layers of self-knowledge I was staring at, I had completely convinced myself that law school was the right path for me. I was certain that I had finally figured out what was exactly right for my changing life, sure even that I could continue to change within the boundaries of that profession without compromising my own free spirit.

I began law school with the kind of gusto with which I begin all of my endeavors. I fell head over heels in love with legal language and buried myself happily in books as children will bury themselves in the sands of beaches. This experience was going to be just another step on the boardwalk of my life and I was excited about the chance to wind my way along the coast of this new career.

But, alas, the excitement was short-lived. I liked law school well-enough, but I have never been a woman suited to a life of structure. I was fine on days when I had no class and I could linger in coffee shops, reading my books and working on cases. But on days when I had to go to class, it was a struggle to force myself to conform. Every fiber of my being fought against my logical insistence that it was just class and that I could go; I felt weighted down by my own insistence that I stick to the plan.

Lying in bed one day when I was supposed to be attending a seminar for my contracts class, I came across that life list in my old scrapbook. I remembered the fervor with which I had crafted every word of that essay. And I remembered that what I had always wanted to be was a writer. I wasn’t certain what that meant. I didn’t know what I would write. Or for that matter, how I would pay my bills without the security of a law firm check coming my way every two weeks.

But I knew one thing for certain: every time that I had quit something in my life, I had left behind an important chapter of my personal story to move on to an even better selection. My life is not a book with a neat and tidy plot, a single climax and an ultimate ending. Instead, my life is a library full of books. That day, I walked away from a law school career as easily as I had walked away from the bartending jobs that hadn’t even made the cut on my life list of career-ending decisions. Today, I am a writer. In total, I have about ten years of professional writing experience behind me from various positions. I’ve been a full-time professional web writer and blogger for nearly five years now. So I can confidently say that I won’t quit this work anytime soon. But who knows? I’ve never regretted quitting anything yet!