I’m used to being ignored. I’m used to blending into the background and observing.
Over time, I’ve learned to leverage this to my advantage, hearing things whispered or discussed quietly while learning a few things on social interactions and who has the best stories.
A month into my new job, and almost three months being back in Chicago, it has been a little weird to be in the limelight, so to speak. More than once, I have been introduced to people, and they already know me, and my reputation without the help of Google. It was weird to participate in a board meeting, and to actually be asked for my opinion. It was weird to be told, bluntly, whatever support I needed to accomplish what had been laid out, I had.
It was weird to be welcomed, though in hindsight it should not have been. I have caught myself thinking how I have always wondered what it’s like to be recruited, what it’s like to be one of those people wanted by so many others. The thought is quickly dismissed, though, as being vain, ridiculous and outlandish. Obviously I’m not wanted.
This time, though, there was an objection, supported by evidence collected as part of my personal big data project.
The Pendulum Analogy fits here.
I’m genetically programmed to swing between extremes, and I have gradually learned to recognize these fluctuations, take a deep breath, find my Monet Distance and examine what is really going on. Sometimes I’m successful and sometimes I’m not. Like anything, it takes practice, and, as I’m learning, patience.
In early Fall of last year, I had swung to the extreme of leaving the legal technology space all together in favor of pursuing a MFA in creative writing. The Iowa Writer’s Workshop has been a dream of mine, as I have clung to the belief that any creative writer worth his or her salt goes into that program and comes out, transformed, into his or her ideal. One’s writing is really honed and crafted there, and since I continue to believe there is always some aspect I can improve, it has seemed the perfect place for me.
Researching schools, however, after some years since that dream first took root, Iowa did not seem the gold standard for me. It is an excellent program, but I found myself disenchanted by the fact that it’s in Iowa. No amount of reading about the program, works by those from the program or anything else could dislodge the fact that I did not want to relocate to a smaller town in the middle of the country. In hindsight, this was smart. I had chosen the university I did for undergrad because it had the best journalism school in the country, and I wanted to write for Sports Illustrated. It wasn’t until I was admitted to the J-School, and sat through classes in my first semester that I realized I was incredibly bored. The life of the sports journalist is routine, and I found myself swapping out a “we played as a team” quote after a win for “we failed to execute” after a loss. Predictability. Not for me.
Disenchanted, I dropped out of J-School, only to re-apply and get accepted, again, only for the magazine track. I thought that would offer more variety, more of a challenge, along with double-majoring in economics.
Nope. I dropped both and pursued the degree everyone thought I was best suited to from the start: English.
I took to English immediately. It engaged my curiosity, the Seeking Pathway, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had some excellent professors, some of whom I have remained in touch with over the years. There was a sense of freedom. I was no longer tied to this rigid structure of journalism, of the inverted pyramid, strictly reporting the news. I was free to wander down narrow alley ways, jump in the dumpster and root around. I was free to climb the fire escape and see if I could really jump to the roof across the street, not just across the alley. I loved it, but I didn’t appreciate it at the time. I couldn’t.
Dropping out of J-school, disenchanted and completely uninterested in what I thought I loved the most felt like failure.
That has dogged me.
Only now, as I write this, am I starting to understand. Only now, as I write this, do I see how that one act had such a deep, resounding impact on me. It tugged at the corners of my mind, grabbed a little more and then really let loose when I considered Iowa.
It may be heralded as the pinnacle of fiction writing schools, but it wasn’t where I wanted to go next. There were other schools now, also with stellar reputations. I learned that Chad Harbach, the author of The Art of Fielding, one of my favorite books, is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s creative writing program. I learned that North Carolina had excellent schools. I learned of the Stanford Stegner Writing Fellowship, which had the added benefit of being in California and near where I wanted to live one day. It also offered teaching fellowships, so I’d be able to write, engage and teach, too.
There were suddenly other options that seemed more appealing to me, with one hitch: the GRE. It wasn’t necessarily required by the MFA program, but it was often required by the governing graduate school.
I’ve been a horrible test taker. I didn’t understand why until I took calculus as an undergrad. I immediately dismissed schools that required the GRE, but after more research I learned scores didn’t carry much weight. It was, quite literally, a check box on the application. I eased up preparation for it, and set to work on rounding up recommendation letters and improving my creative writing portfolio. The portfolio is the most important piece.
Throughout October, there was this nagging sense that I didn’t really want to go to graduate school again. True, it’d be creative writing, something I thoroughly enjoy, but then what? Publish? Maybe. Hopefully. Teach? Perhaps. But where? And at what level?
I asked myself a more fundamental question: did I want to teach creative writing for a career?
Answer: no.
It was like J-School all over again, except I was armed with new information: Monet Distance. That nagging sense was walls closing in, being pigeon-holed. Forcefully focused. Narrow interests. Little challenge. Boredom.
I’m reminded of this quote from Steve Jobs commencement speech in 2005:
you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
Looking backwards, connecting some dots, I have to be challenged and engaged in some fashion. I have to be able to interact and associate with people outside my job, outside my industry, outside whatever I have come to consider normal, familiar, status quo.
Those are things that initially attracted me to legal technology. Specifically, to issues of technology and privacy. The concept of privacy is nuanced, and with the introduction of social media, psychology and sociology factor in and require people to take a hard look at both themselves and their surroundings. The impact is wide, from government to education to dating to, well, just about everything. There’s a generational divide, too, as those who have grown up with social media have a different viewpoint on it, privacy and the world at large.
Working through all of this I came to realize that I was stymied, pigeon-holed, and getting a MFA may not be the best answer. I didn’t have another idea at the time, though, and in hindsight, it gave me something to focus on for a couple of months. That let things percolate.
I came to realize I still enjoyed writing about the legal technology space. I still enjoyed writing. I didn’t enjoy the narrow focus. Familiar. Status quo. Connecting dots, boredom is not far behind.
Somewhere in that time frame I got an email from a well-respected lawyer and good friend of mine, which is a story for another time. So far, it has resulted in still experiencing this feeling called happiness, but the reason eludes me.
It’s weird, looking back and connecting dots.
Yet cool.
I am a believer in things happening for a reason. I’m impatient though, so I prefer the reason make itself known sooner rather than later. As a few people keep reminding me, exercising patience is important.
I’m learning how to exercise patience. Perhaps that is the reason…