I Was Looking for a Job and Then I Found a Job and Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

I was reading a magazine once, and I saw a quote from someone (I think it was Diane von Furstenberg, not Gandhi or anyone like that) that said, "They can't take from you what you've already had." The quote resonated and has stuck with me through the years. When I read it, I had what Oprah's magazine calls "an a-ha moment."

In one light, the quote directs us not to delay joy. This is the reason that I travel so compulsively. I want to make sure that if something happens tomorrow that ends my ability to travel, that I have had at least some of the experiences I want to have. It wouldn't be enough, but it would be something.

In another light (one I've been considering more this week), the quote counsels us to take stock in the face of setbacks and figure out what resources we have going forward. I could not be more pissed off that my current employer is asking me to leave. It is utter bullshit, and I deserve far better treatment after everything I've done for these ingrates. I hope the office burns down with about half the employees still inside (a certain half -- not just any random half). Right now, those feelings of bitterness and rage, while entirely valid, are not helpful or productive in moving forward to my next job. But despite how shoddily my employer is treating me, the experience of working there has not been a waste at all. I moved to a new city where I've always wanted to live at their expense, I took and passed a bar exam in a new state at their expense, I added some new skills to my toolbox, I made some new friends, I added a prestigious employer to my resume, and I have access to a wealth of institutional wisdom that I intend to appropriate when I leave.

I'm trying really hard to be as positive as possible about this situation and to see it as an opportunity. I've been out of school for a little less than four years, and yet I've already endured the no-offer from my 2L summer employer and now I'm going through this. It discourages me because I look at my friends and think that I am as smart as they are, I work as hard as they do, and the school I went to is as highly-regarded as any school any of them went to, and yet they have not known the career misfortunes that I have. It's useless to compare oneself to other people, but it's also inevitable.

My mom told me I need to consider what I'm putting out to the universe. (She spent the weekend with her two sisters, who are both very big on putting things out to the universe. They have been big on this for years, maybe decades. Certainly long before anyone had ever heard of The Secret.) When I stop rolling my eyes at the New Agey-ness of that to consider the question, I realize that I haven't been happy at my firm in quite awhile. I like a lot of things about my profession, but I don't like the garbage that goes along with doing it at the top level. After I got the no-offer, it was important to me to be hired by a highly-ranked firm to prove to myself that I could do it. When I finally achieved that goal, I realized at some level that just because I can do something doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.

Overall, I like what I do. I don't know that I feel "called" to do it, but I enjoy it. I like helping clients to identify their problems and solve them, I like being part of a team, I enjoy research and writing, and I generally like feeling as if what I do helps someone. The way we do things at my current place of work (and this is something that goes throughout the profession at that tier, not just in this one location), there's a lot of excess crap that gets in the way of the stuff I actually like. For instance, tying my bonus to a certain number of billable hours encourages me to do things as inefficiently as possible or to do things myself that I should delegate to a subordinate. That doesn't benefit the client or, really, me in the sense that I'm not learning anything. The politics are also a total quagmire. Every office has politics regardless of what line of work is involved, but figuring out the politics of an office with 1000 people (literally) working in it is just beyond me. I am not that Machiavellian. Blair Waldorf probably isn't that Machiavellian. When you get to the top levels at a place like where I work, there are a few genuinely cool people, but they are curious aberrations. For the most part, to succeed in that environment, you have to subsume everything that makes you human. You have to turn yourself into a sociopath, if you aren't one already. I'm not down for that.

Ultimately, I think this situation is for the best. I doubt I would have chosen to leave the level of practice that I was at on my own because the money is too good. But now that I'm forced to go, I am optimistic that it will turn out for the best.