bridge and tunneled

Apartment, Work

2006-09-19T17:33:00.000-04:00

It pretty much took all summer, but I found an apartment on craigslist and I think it's working out well so far. Once I decided on the neighborhood I wanted, and set a realistic price range, it became a lot easier to see places and make a decision. The first place I was set on, back in mid-August, fell through, which turned out to be fine because the two potential roommates were fresh out of college and I think it would have been a mistake to live with people that much younger than me. Trying to jump into an existing apartment was a great decision and I'm really glad I didn't give up and go running to a broker. My situation was unique, though, and I'm lucky that I was able to live in New Jersey while I was looking.

The place I ended up with is a duplex. My room is on the first floor (of the apartment, we're actually on the fifth floor) and faces south. We've got a working fireplace, high ceilings, and then my roommate has the entire upstairs area. We share a bathroom but seem to keep different hours so there's yet to be an issue in the morning when I'm getting ready for work. His room opens up onto the roof, which also faces south, and because the building across the street is only three stories, we have this amazing view looking downtown. Of course we haven't really used the roof much yet, but my birthday is coming up in a few weeks and I think we're going to throw a party out there.

I love my room, too. The bed is lofted so I have a ton of floor space. I bought a small couch at Ikea and there was a huge wall unit for the TV and tons of shelves in there already. It's just really New Yorkish and I look forward to going home at night. I feel bad because Marsha and her roommate have come over to see the place and been really jealous because their apartment (which is only five blocks away) is SO much smaller than mine. They didn't look for three months, though, and I keep reminding them that the vacancy rate this summer in Manhattan was something like 0.7 percent- insanity.

Things on the Marsha front have been going very well. We spent some time alone together down in Georgia back in August before we went to a law school classmate's wedding near Savannah. She just started a new job, still in New Jersey, and she's taking the bus out every day. It's about an hour each way, door to door, but she hasn't been complaining yet and hopefully they'll let her work out of the New York office on occasion. It sounds like a really cool practice, too. They do a lot of entertainment and IP law and Marsha's come home really fired up about the stuff she's been working on. If she's happy, I'm happy, so here's hoping she continues to do well with it.

As for me, the last week or so has been very quiet at work. I had two very busy weeks at the end of August and immediately after Labor Day, but for whatever reason it's really settled down since. They've let me cover a few depositions (unheard of at my old firm) and communicate directly with clients and opposing counsel and I really feel like I'm experiencing what it's like to actually practice law instead of being a glorified paralegal. Of course I do get my share of mundane assignments, but it's worth it, I think, because I'm getting exposed to a lot of things that I'd never have been involved with at the old firm.

We went down to the Feast in Little Italy last night and ate at La Mela which was actually really good. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of the places along Mulberry Street (other than Il Fornaio and Il Cortile) but we had a fun time. Our table was huge- like 17 people or something- and we all ended up drinking way too much wine. Marsha and I ran the loop in Central Park today and almost died- I feel horrible right now but we're out to get some food and then to a birthday party. Hopefully I'll feel better after we eat.

In the past month...

2006-09-18T23:44:00.000-04:00

I've got a few good reasons for why I haven't been doing much writing here lately. They include:

1. Planning my high school's 10th reunion (which went off this past weekend really well- maybe I've got a future as an event planner).

2. Trying to keep my baseball team afloat (fall season started on Sunday, team still exists, but it's been a real pain trying to get everyone on the same page and enthusiastic about playing).

3. Moving into Manhattan two weeks ago and trying to get myself settled. It's been great and I love my new place but I'm having a lot of trouble establishing any sort of routine. I've only been to the gym once since I moved and I've yet to run in the park, even though I live two blocks away. It's frustrating and I'm disappointed with myself for not being more diligent about taking care of myself.

4. Work. I've been enjoying it but I've been busy. I'm working on a few other writing projects for marketing purposes and that's taken up a lot of any free time I'd have to write more freely here.

I think the bottom line is I need to get settled in and start a routine. I read somewhere that it takes three weeks to adjust to anything new. This is week three of my personal Manhattan Project so hopefully that turns out to be true.

Until then...

Walking

2006-08-13T23:05:00.000-04:00

Earlier today, I walked from West 85th Street (I had to meet my new roommate to drop off my security deposit) down to Penn Station on 34th Street. It was absolutely gorgeous outside- it felt like October (my favorite month) and not August and I just couldn't bring myself to get on the subway. I poked in a couple stores (looking for nice pants for work but no dice) and bought the newspaper before I hopped the train back to New Jersey. It was nice just being alone for a while- I think everyone needs time like that every now and then.

I've been so happy to be back in the city and I'm ecstatic to be moving back- Labor Day weekend can't come soon enough. Even when I'm doing something as mundane as sitting at my desk at work, I can feel the energy that Manhattan exudes surrounding me, and it's incredibly invigorating. I think it was very easy for me, after spending as much time in the city as I did through my early 20s, to forget how unique the urban lifestyle is, and how lucky I was to be experiencing it at such a young age. I don't regret my decision to leave New York for law school, but I do regret not giving more weight to the importance of location during my 2L job search. I'm very grateful to my new firm for giving me the opportunity to change my life, and I think I'm taking full advantage of this second chance at New York. At least that's what I hope I'm doing.

Anyway, I'm playing softball in Central Park tomorrow night which should be a lot of fun. My hardball team got bounced from the playoffs last weekend and our fall season doesn't start until after Labor Day. I feel like I'm going through withdrawal and I can't wait to get back out there again. I started to really rip the ball the last few games of the regular season and I need to get back in the cages before fall ball and hopefully keep it going once we start up again.

Excuses

2006-08-10T23:25:00.000-04:00

I haven't been blogging lately for a bunch of reasons, but you'll be happy to know that most of them are positive.

More than anything else, I've just been really busy. I've been working on a bunch of projects at work that have spilled into my free time (they're incredibly nerdy and engineering/law-related, but I've been enjoying every minute of them). Work itself has ramped up significantly over the last month but I'm really, really happy with it. It feels so good to be in a situation where I'm actually getting something out of the effort I'm putting into it.

On the other hand, I completely underestimated how difficult this commute into the city would be, and as ridiculously happy as I am to be back in New York, and as much as I like my new job, I'm just exhausted all the time and I'm rarely back in New Jersey in time to do anything other than collapse on the couch and catch the end of the Yankee game. Also, Marsha moved from Hoboken to the Upper West Side a couple weeks ago, so lately I've been dealing with the aftermath of the start of The Manhattan Project (as my buddy likes to call it).

All in all, things are going well, and I'm hoping that this blog will get back on track once, yes, I move into the city at the end of the month. It's a done deal, I'm joining a roommate in a really nice duplex on the Upper West Side (near Marsha, which I'm happy about) and I can't wait to trade my car for the subway.

Catch you then.

Ramping Up

2006-07-27T18:26:00.000-04:00

I've seriously stepped up my apartment search over the past two weeks which has unfortunately put an equally serious cramp in my blogging habits. I wish I had some positive news to report, but all I've managed to come up with are a few near misses. It's probably for the best though- I'm optimistic that if I can hold out at home for one more month, I'll have an easier time finding a place in September once the college/new job crowd is all settled in. Marsha is moving into the city on Saturday so at least I'll have a place to crash during the week. The commute hasn't been too bad- I've been driving and I have a monthly parking spot in a lot a couple blocks away from the office- and even though it takes me a little bit longer to get here in the morning than it did for me to get to the old firm, it's great being in the city at the end of the day and not having to drive an hour to go do something interesting.

I'm still settling into to the new job, I think, but I'm very happy that I made the decision to leave my old firm. I sent an updated contact information email over there a couple of weeks ago and I've heard back from exactly four people. I understand that everyone's busy and that I myself haven't exactly been the best at keeping in touch with them, but I thought the people I considered my friends there would write back and check in. Bizarre, but whatever.

Anyway, I'm sitting at work waiting for one of my friends around the corner to finish up for the day and then we're going to grab a drink. Hope you're all doing well.

Square Footage

2006-07-13T11:31:00.000-04:00

I'm going to look at an apartment tonight. It's an open house on the Upper West Side, near where Marsha is moving next month, and the price is fantastic. The catch? I think it's basically a glorified closet. The dimensions are 14' by 6.5'. Our office manager has a tape measure and we figured out that it's longer, but smaller, than her office, which is pretty small. It does have a loft for the bed, though, and a separate bathroom, so hopefully the ceilings are high and it will seem bigger than ninety-one square feet. Ha- we'll see.

I'm ready to move. My parents don't have air conditioning other than in the bedrooms and it's unbearably hot when I get home at night. I know it's only July and August that are nasty here, but the heat just zaps any energy I have left when I get home at the end of the day. I'm hopeful that I can find something reasonable in the city soon, but I've gotten used to saving a lot of my paycheck and not blowing money on rent. I'm willing to trade space for cheaper rent, but I'm sure a ton of other people are too and the open house tonight will be packed. Either way, it'll be good to see what the absolute low end of my price range looks like. I think Marsha's going to come with me and then we'll get some dinner before we head back to Jersey.

The new job is still going well. The partner whose team I work on is away vacationing this week so it's been really quiet. I've had a few small things to take care of but beyond that I haven't had much to do. I was at that client's on Monday for the day working on the document review, which was fine and an easy block of hours, and I've had a few other research projects that I've handled relatively easily. They gave me a contract to work on but it turned out that the client wanted it taken care of quickly, to get the deal done, so somebody more senior just sort of glossed through it and got it out the door. I was glad, though, because the partner that gave it to me seems interested in getting me involved with that type of work. I think it's critical for me to get experience with contracts if I eventually want to transition over to an in-house position. Or whatever. And it's a nice change of pace from litigation.

I'm hungry. It's a great feeling knowing that I don't have to go get in my car and drive around for a half hour to pick up a sandwich. Of course the sandwiches around here cost way more than they did out by my old job, but I'm not complaining.

More About the New Job

2006-07-04T20:30:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's been a while.

I like my new job a lot. I'm very, very happy to be back in the city. They assigned me to a huge case with a client that's based in New Jersey, though, so I've been going out to their offices about once a week so far. I actually don't mind it because the client is an engineering company, the guy running things on their side is one of the most interesting people I've ever met, and I feel like I'm learning a lot just by being out there. They're also giving me a lot of work in the New York office and letting me run with it (i.e. "this just came in, we want you to handle it, go") but at the same time taking a few minutes to explain what they want, what needs to get done, etc. so I haven't felt too overwhelmed- yet. I think I'm going to learn a lot about things that interest me, and I've been doing my best to get off on the right foot with everyone that I've been working for.

The firm is really active in the New York City construction industry which, to me, is very exciting. We hosted a seminar last week about construction financing, which was fascinating, and also had a table at the 2006 AIA Awards Lunch, which was held on the 52nd floor of the new 7 World Trade Center building. A bunch of people that were scheduled for it had to cancel so our marketing coordinator asked me to go. It was great and exactly the type of opportunity I was hoping to get when I accepted this job. The floor they held the lunch on hasn't been built out yet and as we walked in David Childs, the architect of the Freedom Tower, was standing on a stage unveiling the new design for the base of the building (there'd been a ton of criticism about how it looked like a "fortress" after the NYPD voiced security concerns and it consequently had to be redesigned). That was an incredible thrill for an architecture nerd like me. There were something like 750 people at this lunch- all of them artsy, design industry types. I was very happy to be there but, at the same time, it was kind of eye-opening. Seeing people that are unbelievably successful in the field you want to be in can be difficult. It reminds you of how many brilliant minds are out there and how much hard work, luck, and circumstances come into play in achieving success. I believe that you make your own luck, though, and the only things in that equation you can control are your own hard work. I'm committed to doing just that so hopefully in the long run things will pay off for me.

It has only been three weeks, though, and the jury is still very much out on both me as an actual lawyer (I dealt with an adversary last Thursday!) and the new firm. The atmosphere is starkly different, in a good way, from the old firm, but at the end of the day it's still a law firm and there are still things about the place that aren't perfect. I think it's good that I recognize that no place- no firm, no company, no school, no whatever- is perfect, but I'm enthusiastic about working hard and leaving it, whenever that may be, a better place than I found it. I think attitude is so important and I'm trying to stay positive regardless of what they throw at me.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great holiday. I'm very disappointed in myself for basically sitting around on my couch all weekend and watching television. I think I needed this, though, after a few crazy weeks of getting started with the new job, going home with Marsha, etc. so I'm trying not to beat myself up too much over it. Plus, I got to see the entire Italy/Germany game today, played baseball on Sunday, hung out with some friends in the city on Saturday night, and went to Yanks/Mets on Sunday night. So maybe the weekend wasn't a total waste.

Another weekend is rapidly approaching. I love these short weeks. And I'm at the client for two days where the hours are unbelievably easy to ring up.

Time to watch some fireworks.

Driving

2006-06-26T08:48:00.000-04:00

Marsha and I spent a good chunk of the weekend driving. The weather yesterday was miserable; it poured for about 200 straight miles along I-81 and I almost skidded off the road at one point. Happily, we made it back fine, just in time to watch the Yankees get shut out by some no-name Marlin rookie.

I'm about to start my third week here at the new firm. The only thing I'm not happy with right now is my commute. It took about 45 minutes for me to get into the city this morning- fantastic time- but there have been days where traffic across the bridge and coming downtown has been soul-crushing. So, I've been looking at apartments and steeling my parents for the move. I'm not sure when it will happen though.

Marsha and her roommate are moving into the city, and I'm going to live at their new place on the Upper West Side from July 15th until the end of the month, when their lease in Hoboken runs out. It's a good situation for all of us because I'll cut a half month's commute out of my life and they'll get to move all of their stuff relatively leisurely across the river. Marsha's roommate is keeping her job in New Jersey and plans on commuting out across the bridge every morning- I'm suspending judgment on how good of an idea that is until she's done it for a month, but the reverse commute shouldn't be that bad for her. I think I'll use those two weeks to more aggressively look for a place of my own, though I haven't ruled out trying to find a roommate and jumping into an existing apartment situation. It all depends on what's available and how things work out, I guess, but I'm confident I'll find something decent. We'll see.

Diving In

2006-06-22T18:18:00.000-04:00

I've been on the new job for almost two weeks now and I'm doing well, I think. The commute is killing me so I've started to ramp up the apartment search- I'm going to look at a studio in Hell's Kitchen in about an hour. I actually thought I'd found a place over the weekend but the woman renting it turned out to be a total flake and rented it somebody else.

I really like the new firm, though, and they're starting to get me involved in some interesting cases where I think I'm going to have a lot more responsibility than before. That's exciting but also kind of scary. I think it's really the only way to learn, though, at least for me. Sink or swim- we'll see what happens.

I'm going home with Marsha this weekend for her mom's birthday and her folks' anniversary, so I'm not sure when I'll get to write a full-fledged post about how things are going. It's amazing the type of perspective you get on a lousy situation once you make a change, and I can't wait to find some time to write about it.

Job, Weekend

2006-06-15T23:39:00.000-04:00

I took a walk at lunch today and was able to watch a few minutes of the England game through an open window at some bar on Lexington Avenue. It's amazing how much about the city I took for granted while I was living and working there before law school. I'm just so happy to be working there again and I really hope things work out at the new firm. They got my office and computer all set up for me today and I spent the afternoon sort of arranging everything. People kept popping in and introducing themselves and I really have a good feeling about the place. It's only been four days and I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'm actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow. It's a refreshing feeling that I haven't had in a long time.

Marsha's birthday is this weekend and we're going out tomorrow night to celebrate. She's been really stressed out this week because of her job search and I hope a night out in the city will help her relax. I made reservations at this Mexican place downtown that's supposed to be really good and then a bunch of people are meeting us at this bar in the Village. It should be a pretty late night but luckily the U.S./Italy soccer tilt isn't until 2:30 on Saturday afternoon. I can't wait for that, even after our horrendous showing in the opener. I'm still planning on calling my friends over there to talk trash before the match kicks off.

Forza Stati Uniti.

The New Job Is Going Well So Far

2006-06-13T23:48:00.000-04:00

Late this afternoon the managing partner of my new firm came into my office just to see how I was doing. He wanted to make sure I "wasn't bored" and told me we'd sit down in a week when he gets back from vacation to chat about things. Then he left and checked in with the two summer associates that sit in the office next to me (it's not actually my office, I've been squatting while another associate is on vacation because mine isn't ready yet).

I was floored. My old officemate and I used to talk about this all the time, how none of the partners at my old firm would ever do anything like that, just stick their heads into our office and say "hey, how's it going? Need anything?" Just little, two second gestures that mean so much. Already, after two days, and I know this is going to sound ridiculous, particularly because I really haven't done anything substantive yet, I feel more invested in my new firm than I ever did at my old firm. It takes so little to make an office atmosphere not hostile and I could never understand why I constantly walked around my old firm feeling like there was a huge target on my back. I feel nothing like that anymore, and it's great.

Anyway, after two days, I'm optimistic about things. I want them to and that's motivation enough to work hard and try and learn as much as possible from the job. It seems that I can't escape from the clutches of New Jersey, though- I'm in our office out here tomorrow to get up to speed on this case I've been assigned to. I was supposed to go on Thursday but because my office situation is still being straightened out in the city I thought it would make sense just to go tomorrow instead.

So, things seem promising and I'm hopeful. We'll see what happens.

Nerves

2006-06-11T21:16:00.000-04:00

The new job starts tomorrow and I'm nervous.

These three weeks flew by and I got very little of my agenda accomplished. I'd hoped to take a road trip (didn't) catch up on movies (nope, other than The Da Vinci Code and La Strada) read a bunch of books (ugh, no) and catch up with people I've fallen out of touch with (a couple, I guess, but not really).

I'm not really sure why. I slept a lot, I had a great time in Mexico with Marsha, and I went to a bunch of Yankee games, but I was really hoping to write more and just... do more, I don't know. I think that's the really lousy thing about vacation- no matter how long it is, you always feel like it wasn't long enough or that you could have crammed in a lot more. One of my friends suggested that I just not show up tomorrow and then, when they called or emailed looking for me, say that I thought we'd decided on July 12th as my start date. Ha.

I remember very vividly the nights before I left home for college and law school. I was feeling very similarly- nervous but excited, like my entire life was about to drastically change in just a few hours. And change it did, both times, probably more drastically than I ever could have imagined. That's what makes this change so exciting and why I'm optimistic that things at the new firm are going to work out well.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Back from Vacation

2006-06-07T00:05:00.000-04:00

Marsha and I just got back yesterday from five nights in Cancun so I apologize for being off the blogging radar for the past week. We stayed at the Grand Oasis and had an absolutely fantastic time. It was really great to be alone with her and get away from everything for a while. The resort was all-inclusive and we stepped out of the hotel maybe two or three times. I'm not the artificial, don't show me any sort of sights, leave me alone type of vacationer, but I think both of us just wanted to go sit on a beach and drink Corona for a week, so it worked out well.

I am starting to get a bit nervous about starting my new job. It's fine, though, because it's a much different feeling from what I was experiencing last August before I joined my old firm. I'm really looking forward to it, I'm very positive about it, but at the same time it's tough not to ignore the uncertainty of starting something new. It's a good, risky feeling, though, something I haven't felt since I was about to move away to law school, and I think it's going to be a really good situation for me. At least that's what I'm hoping.

My stint up in Boston before the trip to Mexico was great. My brother and I had pretty good seats for the ballgame, which the Yanks won 8-6, and nobody gave us much trouble about rooting for them. The only time we were really vocal was when Kyle Farnsworth struck Big Papi out looking with the bases loaded in the 8th inning. Watching Rivera slam the door on the Sox in the 9th was pretty sweet too.

Fenway is a lot like Yankee Stadium in the sense that the area around the ballpark is just buzzing with activity before the game starts. I've been to a lot of stadiums and there's nothing worse than a ballpark in the middle of a parking lot (Shea and the new park in Texas, for example). Football, and its ritualistic tailgate, is a different story- that's exactly the kind of location you want (which is why the Jets' proposed West Side Stadium in Manhattan was a terrible idea) but for baseball you need that connection to bars and restaurants in the surrounding streets. I think there's something very fake about the new mallparks that are built with funky dimensions down the lines and in the alleys even though they sit in the middle of nowhere. The old parks- like Fenway and Yankee Stadium- had quirks like the Green Monster and the famous short porch in right because, in order to get built, they had to fit in with the fabric of the city. I guess I'm a traditionalist, but it's definitely way more fun to hang out in a bar in the neighborhood and then walk over to the ballpark right before first pitch. Either way, I had a great time up at Fenway even though I hate the Red Sox and their awful fans with a passion.

Incidentally, my neighbor gave me tickets for Yanks/Sox tomorrow night at the Stadium but it's supposed to rain. Apparently the weather here was miserable while we were gone. I wish it would just turn to summer already- baseball shouldn't be played in pouring rain in the middle of June. Maybe Curt Schilling- tomorrow night's started for the Sawx- will pull a muscle or something from the wet dirt. I can't stand that jerk.

Marsha and I were in the city tonight with some friends to see the The Daily Show, which was great as always. I hadn't seen a taping since Carson Daly a few years ago and, well, you can imagine how that was. I don't even know how or why I went- actually, David Wells (used to pitch for the Yankees) was on and he was hysterical so maybe that was part of it. I don't know.

Anyway, bed. Or Mets/Dodgers for a few innings. I love late night baseball, even if it involves two of my least favorite teams.

Thoughts On Barbri

2006-05-23T22:21:00.000-04:00

A good buddy of mine is sitting for the New York bar, for the first time, in July and he started his Barbri class today. I couldn't help but think back to last summer and what worked for me while I was studying for the exam. So, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the Barbri course from my experience in 2005.

1. Taking Notes During Barbri

I downloaded the outlines off of the Barbri website before every lecture and just took notes within those files on my computer. A couple of times I tried filling them in by hand in the book, but when I went back after class to make an outline, it just took way too much time. A lot of the professors will tell stories or ramble about material unrelated to the bar exam during their lectures, which is when I'd go back and resize the fonts, get rid of white space in the document, etc. The lecturers, for the most part, do a really good job of sticking to the outlines and making it easy to follow along and fill in the blanks, and I think it's a waste of time to not use a computer during class.

2. How I Studied

After we were done with a particular subject, I'd condense my notes again and then print them out and put them in a nice three ring binder. I didn't open the full Barbri outlines once and I don't remember using the condensed Barbri outlines at all either. I studied exclusively from my binders (and Marsha's charts that she made for some of the trickier-to-outline subjects like New York Practice) and the New York Essays book. I pretty much stuck to the Paced Program but I never reviewed anything prior to the lecture.

3. In General

I think the most important thing to remember during Barbri is that you're not going to learn everything all at once. During Corporations, just worry about Corporations. Go to the lecture, take good notes, condense them in a way that makes sense to you, and follow the Paced Program. You're not going to memorize anything until the final two weeks before the exam anyway and it's far more important during May and June to develop good notes and start compiling them so they're easy to study from in late July. Don't freak out, develop a systematic routine for studying, exercising, and relaxing while you're going through Barbri, and really pound the studying for the final two weeks before the exam and you'll be fine.

Anyway, I'm off to Boston tomorrow morning for the rubber game of the Yankee-Red Sox series. My brother got tickets through work and I'm driving up in the morning to spend the day in town before the game in the evening. I won't be wearing my Yankee hat, though, after what happened to a friend of mine during the 2002 NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Nets and Celtics at the Fleet Center. He and his brother were leaving the building after the Nets clinched the title and a trip to the Finals. They were just walking out, down some stairs, one wearing a Nets cap, the other a Springsteen t-shirt, and these awful massholes jumped them, sucker-punching one of them in the back of the head. To be frank, the people up there scare me, and I'm not interested in getting beat up at Fenway tomorrow night.

Baseball

2006-05-22T00:56:00.000-04:00

I took the mound today with both of our top pitchers out of town for the weekend. 7 1/3 innings and about 150 pitches later, I left the game with a two run lead. Our left-handed ringer slammed the door and we walked away with a hard-fought 13-11 win for our first victory of the season.

I like to describe myself as a crafty, junk-balling righty. I threw a TON of curveballs today and a few of them looked pretty good. It's a tough pitch to stay on top of but when it's working, it can be devastating, especially in our league where a lot of the hitters seem to have never seen a really good breaking ball before. My change up? As I told my catcher, I've got one, two, and three, but I never throw three, so don't call it. I'd like to develop a slider and maybe a knuckler too- I used to throw a knuckle curve but it didn't move much and I remember getting smacked around whenever I'd toss it. My fastball had some pop, even in the later innings, and I struck out six guys, walked one, and hit two. Actually, I beaned one guy with about a 50 mph curveball that didn't curve at all. It was raining a bit, though, so the ball was kind of wet at times and it was difficult to get a good grip on it.

Playing comes with a price, though- I cannot describe how sore I am right now. My arm actually feels pretty good, but the rest of my body, the right side of my back in particular, feels like it's on fire. I'm hoping about twelve hours in bed helps, but I'm not very optimistic about getting to the gym any time soon.

Vacation starts tomorrow. I have a billion little things to do at home but I really need to plan my week out, I don't want to end up sitting around and doing nothing. I've got three weeks before I start at the new firm and I really want to take advantage of the time off.

Ethics

2006-05-18T22:11:00.000-04:00

Instead of blogging tonight, I'm slogging through Ethics homework for my CLE class. It's more awful than it sounds, believe me. I did manage to get a good run in earlier, though. It poured this afternoon but cleared up just as I got home and it was a gorgeous evening to run outside.

Last day of work at my old firm tomorrow. It's bittersweet but more sweet than bitter, I think. I had a nice long chat with our recruiting coordinator today which made me feel really good. Everyone has been so positive and I think I'm leaving on good terms, which is something that was really important to me.

Anyway, back to Ethics. It's going to be a late night.

Why I Will Not Miss This Job

2006-05-16T10:38:00.000-04:00

Back car out of driveway at home: 7:50AM
Pull into parking spot at work: 10:20AM

Overturned tractor-trailer. Fuel spill. All lanes closed. Eight mile delay, bumper-to-bumper.

Hey, at least it's almost lunchtime.

Moving On

2006-05-15T09:12:00.000-04:00

It's kind of a long story, but I'm switching jobs and (eventually) moving back to Manhattan. I can't tell you how liberating it feels to finally write those words.

I was hesitant to discuss the situation here as it unfolded, but now that I've given my notice and the dust at work has more or less settled, I thought it might be a good time to explain why I've been so quiet here of late. Yes, my CLE class is partly to blame, but it's been an absolutely insane few weeks and I'm really glad everything seems to be heading in the direction I want.

I took a job with a smaller firm in Manhattan. It's only thirty lawyers and it's a boutique that concentrates solely on construction and real estate litigation, though lately they've been doing more transactional real estate work. What I really like about their practice, though, is that they don't represent only contractors, which a lot of construction boutiques seem to do. They do a lot of work on the owner's side, as well as representing engineers, architects, and lenders, so I think I'm going to get exposed to all the legal facets of the construction process.

Fusing my law and engineering degrees is something I've wanted to do for a long time and I think this firm is a great opportunity to throw myself into an area of the law that interests me and offers the potential, down the road, to transition in-house to a construction or real estate company, which has been one of my long-term goals since before I even started law school.

How I got the job is kind of a crazy. Back in January, I was messing around on the computer one night and I stumbled across this firm's website, where it posts a quarterly newsletter. In the latest of them, I noticed an article that was on the same topic as a paper I had written in law school, which was published last fall. (I was on the environmental law journal and the paper was about the intersection of environment-friendly design and various state and local initiatives attempting to promote such construction among developers). So I started reading it and at the end was a footnote to my paper. I was floored. It turns out that the managing partner of the firm also has a degree in civil engineering from the same undergrad as me, so I sent him an email, one thing led to another, and they made me a really good offer. Typically this firm doesn't hire young associates but they're giving me credit for my construction experience after college, as well as my engineering degree. I got a really good vibe from the managing partner at the interview, as well as from the associates when I went and had lunch with a few of them before I made up my mind. I took Professor Bowman's advice, listened to my gut, and pulled the trigger. We'll see what happens, but I really did get a good feeling from everyone I talked to at the new firm and I think that's a good sign.

So, this is my last week working in New Jersey and, despite all of the excitement, I do have mixed feelings about leaving my current firm. I know I made the right decision but I do have a lot to say about what went into it and why I was so quick to bail after only nine months on the job. Still, I think writing in this space has helped clarify, at least in my mind, where I see my career heading. It's been exactly one year to the day since I graduated law school and, even though things at my current firm didn't work out, I really feel like I learned a lot this year about myself and what I need to be doing in order to make myself happy. And that's really much more than half of the battle, in my opinion.

I have a lot of loose ends to tie up here this week, as well as my last two nights of CLE, so things promise to continue to be hectic through Friday. But a good kind of hectic- vacation is right around the corner, and I absolutely cannot wait.

Hating on CLE

2006-05-10T13:10:00.000-04:00

My CLE class is a very easy target these days in terms of placing blame for why my blogging habits of late have been less than exemplary. So, I'm pointing my finger and telling you that, once I finish my Trusts and Wills homework tonight, I plan on writing until I can't see the screen anymore. I'm in the midst of dealing with some major, but positive, life changes, and I look forward to writing about them once I get my real world act together. Until then...

Tired

2006-05-03T09:01:00.000-04:00

I'm taking this mandatory New Jersey continuing legal education class on Monday and Tuesday nights. It's absolutely brutal and I'm feeling completely dazed here at work this morning. Last night was the end of the third week but we've still got two weeks left to go. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to drive an hour there from work and then another hour home afterwards, or if I wasn't consistently missing my sporting events (Yankees/Red Sox, Nets/Rangers playoffs, etc.) or collapsing into bed immediately upon getting home. The real kicker is that there's HOMEWORK- I have to postmark these two ridiculous assignments for Family Law and Real Estate by Friday. I can't think of anything I'd rather do less tonight than stay at work late pounding out some divorce motion for pendente lite relief, or filling out a HUD-1 closing statement. Ugh.

Work is fine. Marsha's fine. The weather here is gorgeous and I wish I was playing golf. But, there's law to be practiced. So...

I Don't Want to Talk About the Rangers

2006-04-29T00:25:00.000-04:00

I stumbled across Field of Dreams on TV the other night at the point where Ray Kinsella is in Minnesota trying to convince the older incarnation (ghost? whatever) of Moonlight Graham to come with him back to Iowa. Before that happens, though, they're talking about Graham's short-lived career with the old New York Baseball Giants: one inning played, zero at-bats. Ray asks him about that inning, how it felt to get that close to his dream of digging into the box against a big league hurler, and Graham says:

You know, we just don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they're happening. Back then I thought, well, there'll be other days. I didn't realize that that was the only day.

I didn't realize that was the only day. Those words really, really frighten me to consider seriously. Maybe it's not the only day, right now, for me to take the next step in my life, but as the weeks and months continue to pass and I'm still living at home with my parents, I'm begin to wonder how much longer this can continue. Settling into a routine that's not challenging, that's not what you want in the long-term but isn't so horrible that it's forcing you to actively do something about it, is extremely dangerous, in my opinion. I don't hate my job. I don't hate living with my parents. And that's a problem because neither of those two things jive with any of my long-term plans.

I keep telling myself that my day will come. I'll get back into the city, I'll get a job there, I'll find a nice apartment, etc. But who knows? There are no guarantees in life and I feel like I'm waiting for something to happen, but nothing's going to happen unless I take a more active role in shaping my future. Yeah, my firm has an office in New York, but who knows if or when they'll assign me over there? I feel like if I don't do something proactive I'm going to wake up, be 30, and stuck in New Jersey for the rest of my life. I don't hate New Jersey at all- in fact, I can definitely see myself back here eventually- but I think New York practice is its own very peculiar beast which, if you don't learn from the ground up, you'll never master. In other words, it seems very easy to move out from the city back to Jersey, but it's very hard to go the other way. I don't think I ever really appreciated that, particularly while I was applying to firms as a 2L.

I've got 2.5 years left of my 20s. I want to enjoy them and I feel like the reasons why I haven't pursued a change more aggressively are stupid. Now is the time. As Rage Against the Machine once said:

It has to start somewhere
What better place than here?
What better time than now?

Can't stop me now.

City tomorrow for lunch with my mom and then watching Nets/Rangers/Yankees/NFL Draft uptown with some college friends and, perhaps, a guest appearance from Marsha and her roommate.

We Shall Overcome / Let's Go Rangers

2006-04-26T15:48:00.000-04:00

An appropriate title for a post on a day like this. It was a battle to get through work today but I think I'm about ready to get out of here. I'd like to pick up the new Springsteen album and make it home in time to watch the Ranger game, but I don't think I'll have enough time. I could just buy it on itunes but for some reason my computer no longer recognizes my ipod, and I can't put any new music on it.

I've been busy this week and I think the nice weather has helped lift the veil of semi-depression I was under over the weekend. I also think the main reason I've been feeling sluggish about a lot of things lately is the fact that I'm still living at home. I know, I'm saving a lot of money, it's temporary, my parents treat me well, etc., but it's very difficult to wake up every morning and wonder when your life is really going to get going. I could ramble on about this for a while, and I think tonight I might do just that, but if I don't get out of here soon I'm going to miss the opening face-off.

Let's go Rangers. I've got tickets to Game 5 at the Meadowlands on Sunday and I really, really don't want them to go to waste.

Resurfacing

2006-04-25T14:16:00.000-04:00

I'm swamped at work and I have to leave early again tonight for New Jersey's mandatory first-year attorney continuing legal education class, which continues every Monday and Tuesday until mid-May. I've also got INXS stuck in my head- thank you, Jack FM. As you might imagine, things could be worse, but I'm not quite sure how. I also had a lousy weekend, not for any particular reason, but I was just in a really crummy mood the entire time and I hope it was just the weather. The end of this week looks better, though- I'm heading to the Stadium on Thursday for Yankees v. Devil Rays and with a little luck the Rangers will have cut the Devils' series lead in half to 2-1 by then.

More to come. Back to billing.

Photoshopping

2006-04-20T23:05:00.000-04:00

I picked up a copy of Photoshop over the weekend at Marsha's and I've been messing around with it ever since. I had a ton of things to do tonight when I got home from work and instead I just sat here on the couch playing around with this new logo I made for the blog. I'm pretty proud of myself, though it doesn't look as good and took me about ten times as long as it did for my friend to make the old one. Regardless, I'm happy with it.

Marsha and I had a really good time last night in the city. I didn't get home until about 1:45, though, and work today was not a pretty picture. I'm looking forward to the weekend even though it's supposed to rain. It's a great sports weekend- I have Yankee tickets for Saturday and a doubleheader in Newark on Sunday morning, plus playoff hockey and hoops for the Rangers and Nets to watch, but I doubt the rain will hold off and I'll get to do anything outside. Frustrating, especially because it's been so spectacular this week and I've been holed up inside Industrial Park, New Jersey billing away.

Blah.

Room with a View

2006-04-19T16:53:00.000-04:00

The door to the conference room across the hall is open and I'm gazing wistfully outside at an absolutely spectacular afternoon here in New Jersey. All the young associates are stuck with interior offices that don't have any windows so it's a rare treat to see blue sky from my desk. As you know by now, I'm a huge nerd when it comes to buildings, and there are numerous studies that prove definitively how employees are significantly more productive if their work spaces receive natural light. Are you taking notes, Law Firm? Actually, I really hope you're not. But if anybody asks why my hours are low, again, this month, I'll be sure to pull copies of those studies.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get out of here by six today; Marsha and I are going into the city tonight for dinner and a show at this place downtown. I'm looking forward to it, I just hope I can find a spot for the car.

I Hate the Red Sox

2006-04-14T22:04:00.000-04:00

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

A good friend from law school received an offer today from one of those enormous, multi-national mega-firms. She's also a first-year associate at a similarly sized firm as mine and has been aggressively trying to make a change for a while now. She used a headhunter who, apparently, set her up with a ton of interviews. She works in a different market than me, though, so I'm not sure it's fair to compare her situation to mine, but I think it's very encouraging that she was able to so easily switch firms less than a year into practice.

I envy people that are able to make important life decisions so easily. Maybe they struggle with them internally the way I do, but it seems that some, like my friend, can just make a decision and run with it without looking back. I think part of the problem with letting go- of a job, a relationship, whatever- is that it's far easier to stay put in a less than ideal, but comfortable, situation than take a risk and make a change. My friend didn't like her job, but it certainly wasn't miserable, and I really admire her willingness to say "hey, this isn't what I want, I'm not going to sit around and wait for what I want to just appear, so I'm going to push for it and make it happen." I think that's something I need to remember.

I'm with Marsha at her parents' place for Easter weekend. A drive that should have taken around seven hours yesterday ended up being twelve fun-filled hours on the interstate. We didn't make it here until 4:05AM; I left work at 4:30PM to pick her up in Hoboken and hit the road. Unbelievable. I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the state of Pennsylvania, where I-78 was shut down for six miles while it merged into ONE LANE for "emergency" road work and we lost close to an hour and a half. Ugh.

I hope everyone has a Happy Easter/Passover!

Why I Love Italy

2006-04-10T12:04:00.000-04:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,,1749838,00.html

If neither Prodi nor Berlusconi can fix the economy, experts at ABN Amro say there is another solution: football. In a paper called 'Soccernomics', they argue that Italy has the most to gain from the confidence-boost that a win in this summer's football World Cup could bring - and advised investors to abandon old-fashioned patriotism and cheer for Italy if they have the best interests of the world economy at heart. With a spending boost from cheerful football fans, they argue, whoever is in power could sneak in a few reforms while the nation was still celebrating.

Heading Out of Town

2006-04-07T17:06:00.000-04:00

For those of you who've stuck with me since last fall, you'll recall that I visited my law school last October over Homecoming and vowed to never go back. Well, it looks like that promise was entirely empty because I'm going back again tonight after work for the law school's Alumni Weekend. Marsha's not coming and she's mad at me for not telling her about my plans until the last minute (ugh, another story- she'll get over it), but I'm really looking forward to see a lot of my friends that I haven't seen since we last got together back in December. I do have mixed feelings about being back there again, but I think things are going to be different this time. We'll see.

I went back and totally work-proofed the last few posts where I've even hinted at anything regarding my job. I don't think I ever crossed the line, but I'm going to be extremely careful about what I have to say about it going forward. That being said, I really liked the post I linked to yesterday. I think it would be great to work for an employer that encouraged both blogging and constructive criticism of what went on in the office.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Corporate Blogging Guidelines

2006-04-06T13:08:00.000-04:00

More on this later, but I stumbled across this post which really piqued my interest given my comments regarding blogging about work from the other day.

Yanks on the Coast

2006-04-05T23:48:00.000-04:00

As nice as it is falling asleep to baseball again, I'm having a hard time tearing myself away from a 4-4 ballgame in the 5th inning and calling it a night. Marsha and I went shopping at this outlet mall down by Newark Airport tonight. We had dinner afterwards at Ruby Tuesday's, which was actually quite good, I'd only been there a few times before. It absolutely blows away Applebee's, which I can't stand, though I still think Chili's is better. I can't believe I'm writing about this.

Marsha has an interview tomorrow night with a small firm in the Empire State Building. Her clerkship ends in August and she's starting to freak out about finding a job for next year. A lot of the law clerks have already found something, and I think the pressure is getting to her. She's incredibly well-qualified, smart, and organized, and I really hope something works out soon for her because she deserves it. I'm meeting her in the city after the interview and we're going to go out and get some dinner. I'm really looking forward to it.

Work? I'm on a short-term document review that I need to finish by Friday. It's good hours and not too complicated. I have a couple of research projects that I was assigned last week but nobody has come looking for yet. One of them is for a partner in the NYC office who's incredibly disorganized. I'm going to have to follow up with him because I'm not really sure what he's looking for. Other than that it's been the same old. Two more associates gave notice this week. I know there's a lot of turnover in firms in general, but one of these associates is a rising star, the "perfect" associate for this type of firm, and people are really upset about how it went down. It'll be interesting to see if the firm reacts in any way. My guess is that they won't, but I'm still curious to see if they do.

On another note, our neighbors are putting this ridiculous addition onto their house. If I can find the slate.com piece about McMansions, I'll link it in another post because that's essentially what these people are doing. My dad is an engineer who fancies himself as the neighborhood Herbert Muschamp and he's been stomping around the house and peering out the window at the monstrosity next door for the past few days. How the town granted the variance is beyond me, but I think it's because they're more lenient with corner houses.

Jaret Wright just came into the game to pitch for the Yanks so I might as well go to bed. Actually, I'm willing to give him a chance as a reliever. I think he throws hard enough where he could be effective in shorter appearances.

Blogging About Work

2006-04-04T18:35:00.000-04:00

There's a lot going on at work right now but I really don't feel comfortable blogging about it. I threw a post up here last fall about an email that got sent around (which was straight out of Office Space and almost sent me out of my chair in hysterics) and Frankie ripped into me about how stupid it was to blog about specifics at work, how I was on the precipice of getting fired, etc. So, the post came down, and I've written very little about my job and the people here since then. And I don't think doing so is such a hot idea.

However, it's extremely frustrating because, increasingly, my life is starting to revolve around work, what's going on here, and where my career is heading. I'm just not sure where I could draw an appropriate line in the sand. I'd like to write about what goes on here at work very broadly; I'm using sitemeter to monitor who visits, plus nobody here has a clue that I like opera (why I chose the name of one of my favorite Donizetti characters for my blogger moniker) so maybe it would be okay.

I don't know- your thoughts?

Six Months In

2006-04-01T14:50:00.000-05:00

As I was making sure all of my time entries for March were adequately filled out yesterday before submitting them to accounting, it struck me that I'd just finished my sixth month at the firm. I guess I have mixed emotions about it. For all my complaining about how I'm not happy with my job, or my commute, or the location of our offices, things aren't that bad. They're not exactly what I want but, for now, I've survived for six months and I think that as long as I'm constantly questioning what I'm doing and where my career is heading, I'll be moving in the right direction.

That being said, the six month milestone has me dreaming, once again, of the city. Last night, Marsha and I went to an open bar which was part of our friend's sister's bachelorette party. (Yes, dudes were allowed, the "real" party is tonight and I'm not invited to that). It was at this place on the east side which was, in a word, frat-tastic. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I'm glad we went. We had to hop a cab over there after we took the train in from Hoboken and as we weaved through the early evening midtown traffic, it was impossible not to feel the energy pulsating from the streets. People were everywhere thanks to the warm weather- the bars and restaurants all had their outdoor seating areas set up- and it was impossible for me not to remember how great it was living in the city. I'm getting anxious to get out of my parents' house, I guess, and we'll just have to see how things play out.

After six months, though, what's apparent to me is that my firm isn't going to just cave and move me to New York because it's what I want. And frankly, I'm not sure that it's what I want anymore. Last year I was all hell-bent on practicing intellectual property but now I'm not so sure. I feel like I've rambled about this before, but I really, really miss construction. I'm going into the city tonight for a friend's birthday and we're going to be across the street from the new New York Times building on 8th Avenue, which my old company is putting up. It's an incredible project and I wonder whether I made the right decision in leaving for law school when I did, just as we were working on various pre-construction issues with the owner.

I wasn't happy all of the time that I worked for that company, though, but I don't think anyone is entirely happy all of the time in any job. Even a baseball player has to get tired, at times, of taking the field every single day. Maybe. I don't know.

Anyway, enough of this. I'm off to the city. I hope everyone is doing well.

Thoughts on Vacation

2006-03-26T11:48:00.000-05:00

I'm back in New Jersey after a really terrific vacation. I spent three nights in Las Vegas at the Rio with my buddies from law school and then drove down to Los Angeles with one of my best friends from college after he came up and met us in Vegas. I didn't win anything and, incredibly, I have $13.77 in my checking account right now, but it was a much needed break and I'm really glad I went on the trip. I took the redeye home from LAX on Tuesday night and Wednesday at work was quite possibly the most miserable experience of my life. It was absolutely worth it, though, and I think I'm pretty much back in the swing of things.

I owe Professor Bowman a response to, and thanks for, his latest post to a comment I made on his blog while I was in California. I really appreciate his willingness to discuss law career issues so frankly, and I take his advice very seriously. If you haven't checked his blog out already, and you're a fledgling attorney like me, I highly recommend that you do so.

As for me, and my career angst, I'm not sure how helpful Los Angeles was. It was very refreshing to be out of the office for an extended period of time. It was great spending time with my friend, who's an absolute lunatic behind the wheel and showed me more of LA in four days than I think most Angelenos see in a lifetime. It reminded me of how awesome it is to live in a big city- LA is so different from New York but at the same time so similar. It's just a fascinating place and I'd love to spend an extended period of time out there someday.

I think what I'm getting at is that my trip has me very, very antsy to get out of my parents' house and back into the city. That being said, though, I did give things a lot of thought while I was away. I'm not unhappy with my choice in going to law school. I had a great experience and I enjoy a lot of things about law. I tried visualizing myself in other friends' jobs or in jobs of lawyers who are a few years ahead of me. What I can see myself doing, and what I think I want to be doing five or ten years down the road, is working in-house for a construction or real estate company or maybe even for a developer as something other than an attorney. What I can't see myself doing is practicing patent law or litigating mass toxic tort actions. The fact that I'm just as excited about new buildings going up in midtown as I am about the Yankees or Rangers means something, I think, so maybe it's time for me to go back to my roots and see where the construction/real estate law career path takes me. It's exciting, it's scary, but I feel alive. And that's what matters, right?

Vacation

2006-03-15T09:19:00.000-05:00

I've been swamped at work getting ready for my vacation and this blog has suffered. I'm not proud of that. I'm flying to Las Vegas tonight, spending a few days there with some law school people, and then driving out to Los Angeles for a few days to stay with a friend from college. It should be a great trip and I absolutely cannot wait to get out of here.

I've been telling several of my friends that I think this trip will do one of two things for me. I'll either come back invigorated and ready to really ramp things up at work, actively look for more projects, and really get into the swing of things. Or I'll realize that there's just no way I can keep up this commute, hit the wall, and actively start looking for another job. I guess the third possibility is that I hit it big in Vegas and just don't get on the flight home next Tuesday from LA. Ha. Here's hoping.

Lately, though, I've been thinking about how much I want a break from everything. I never really got a chance to rest after law school. I spent my third year, while most of my friends were partying every night, in the journal office. Last summer of course was the bar exam and then I almost immediately started my job. Most of you know what a fiasco last fall was and, as good as things have been so far in 2006, I'm just completely drained. I'd just love to spend a couple of months- this summer, next fall- traveling or taking an art class or doing something completely unrelated to law. I feel like I lost myself in the frantic rush to get a job, pass the bar, etc. and I just want a break. We'll see.

Career Advice From an Unlikely Source

2006-03-03T19:44:00.000-05:00

Page 2 on espn.com isn't exactly where you look for advice when, like me, you're going through the worst career crisis of your life. Nevertheless, I stumbled across the following in Bill Simmons' latest edition of "The Curious Guy" (available here) where he's exchanging emails with Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker. So, for context, Gladwell is responding to an email in which Simmons asked him how he became such a great writer:

As for your (very kind) question about my writing, I'm not sure I can answer that either, except to say that I really love writing, in a totally uncomplicated way. When I was in high school, I ran track and in the beginning I thought of training as a kind of necessary evil on the way to racing. But then, the more I ran, the more I realized that what I loved was running, and it didn't much matter to me whether it came in the training form or the racing form. I feel the same way about writing. I'm happy writing anywhere and under any circumstances and in fact I'm now to the point where I'm suspicious of people who don't love what they do in the same way. I was watching golf, before Christmas, and the announcer said of Phil Mickelson that the tournament was the first time he'd picked up a golf club in five weeks. Assuming that's true, isn't that profoundly weird? How can you be one of the top two or three golfers of your generation and go five weeks without doing the thing you love? Did Mickelson also not have sex with his wife for five weeks? Did he give up chocolate for five weeks? Is this some weird golfer's version of Lent that I'm unaware of? They say that Wayne Gretzky, as a 2-year-old, would cry when the Saturday night hockey game on TV was over, because it seemed to him at that age unbearably sad that something he loved so much had to come to end, and I've always thought that was the simplest explanation for why Gretzky was Gretzky. And surely it's the explanation as well for why Mickelson will never be Tiger Woods.

Is it really that easy? Just find what you love, be passionate about it, and success will follow?

Maybe it is. I do know what I love. Buildings. Architecture. Cities. Yet I'm stuck in suburbia practicing a type of law I'm utterly disinterested in. At least I know what doesn't make me happy, and maybe that's half the battle.

On a much lighter note, I'm going to turn my brain off for the next couple days. I'm heading in a few minutes over to the train station in Newark to pick up a buddy from home who's coming up from D.C. for the weekend. Then we're off to Marsha's and tomorrow's "St. Patrick's Day in Hoboken" festivities. I can't wait.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

God Bless the USA!

2006-03-01T10:04:00.000-05:00

This makes me proud to be an American.

Thanks for the comments on the opportunity wedge. I think there's much more to be said about it, but unfortunately doing so won't help me finish this memo I'm working on by the end of the day. And with another winter storm bearing down on New Jersey, I'd like to get out of here at a reasonable hour tonight.

I hope everyone is doing well.

The Opportunity Wedge

2006-02-28T12:33:00.000-05:00

I just had a conversation with my secretary that inspired me to wrap up this post that I've been working on for the past few days. Work has been rather busy this week and last night I got all caught up in the dramatic conclusion to The Bachelor. I'm kidding! The Nets went into overtime and by ten o'clock I felt like I'd been run over by a bus.

A lot of what I've written about is how important it is to have a plan in place during the course of your 20s and there's a very interesting post here about something called the "opportunity wedge." Essentially the wedge is an equilateral triangle, where the base represents career opportunities while we're young. As we age and make decisions along the two legs of the wedge, the number of opportunities available to us decreases. Instead of having a full 180 degrees of opportunity along the base, we're restricted more and more until we wind up stuck inside the third, sixty degree angle of the wedge.

I don't even know how my secretary and I started talking about this, but she was telling me how I have the ability to spin my life off in any direction that I choose. Of course I told her no way, that she was pipe dreaming, that I couldn't, say, just quit right now and go become a doctor. I mean, yeah, in theory I could, but practically? I think that's what gives the opportunity wedge some truth to it. The decisions we make, particularly during our critically formative 20s, do restrict the opportunities available to us. I think that's true in the broadest of senses, like my medical school example. I'm fairly confident that I don't want to be a doctor, though, so am I really shutting out an opportunity? Or by pursuing what I'm really passionate about, by narrowing down what makes me happy, shouldn't that actually increase the options available to me in my field of choice?

Maybe that makes it really important to figure out what that choice is. Yes, law, but intellectual property? Construction? Real estate? Why am I so clueless?

Ugh. Now I'm annoyed and I don't want to go back to work.

We're Running Out of Space

2006-02-24T16:50:00.000-05:00

Actually, we're probably not, but this is still crazy.

Governors Island

2006-02-23T13:24:00.000-05:00

I'm interested in seeing how all of these proposals turn out.

Career Services versus My 20s

2006-02-21T21:54:00.000-05:00

For career services offices in law schools across the country, all that matters is the bottom line. What's the average starting salary for the latest graduating class? My experience was that nobody really cared about what my interests were, nobody asked what my long-term goals were, all that mattered to the people coordinating all the on-campus interviewing was how much I would be potentially paid as a first-year associate. I was a walking, talking, breathing number to plug into the law school's annual report, which would hopefully be higher than the year before.

I recognize that falling for the charade that is the second-year recruiting dance was entirely my fault. Did I really want to go practice law in Indianapolis? Why on earth did Marsha and I fly to Dallas for three days to interview with a bunch of places that only hired good old boys from UT and SMU? Still, though, looking back at law school helps me realize how little I really knew about anything related to the practice of law when I was a 1L. Really, I could not have told you what a billable hour was before I started as a summer associate. From that point of view, I feel like it was Career Services' responsibility to explain that, yes, large firms pay absurd amounts of money for first-year lawyers, but there are other options, particularly for those of us who didn't finish in the top ten percent of our 1L class. As I get ready to enter the second half of my first year as an attorney, I've been thinking a lot about where law schools place emphasis on their students' job searches, and how that translates into career and job satisfaction.

While I have been doing a lot of thinking, I don't really have any answers. Yes, it's nice to get paid a good salary but, at least at my current firm, I'm worried that I'm not learning anything practical. Friends of mine at smaller firms are going to court, writing motions, dealing with clients, and I'm ... summarizing trial transcripts. I might be making more than them right now, but five years from now, if this pace keeps up, I'll be essentially unemployable, and they'll have their pick of firms looking for mid-level associates with real experience and real skills. Plus, they won't have sacrificed their 20s in pursuit of a paycheck. Money will always be available to earn, but my youth? That's fleeting.

I'm not trying to bash my firm here, I'm just curious whether the smaller firm is a better place for the young lawyer to start out rather than in a situation where colleagues don't care about your work product or your professional development provided you "meet your hours." That being said, the career services professionals at our school were great. They worked extremely hard and were always willing to look over cover letters and resumes before I sent them out. I think my problem is more with the legal recruiting system in general.

But, as always, I have no idea.

Random Rants

2006-02-19T22:27:00.000-05:00

Global Warming

I'm not a meteorologist. I know very little about weather, though I do watch The Weather Channel on occasion. What I do know is that the weather we've been having in New Jersey this "winter" isn't natural. The power went out in our building for a few minutes on Friday morning and a bunch of us were standing over by the windows looking out at the rest of the complex to see if lights were on anywhere else. It struck me all of a sudden that I was looking out over a lot of grass and that there was no snow on the ground anymore. We got TWO FEET OF SNOW here last Sunday. The high temperature on Friday was SIXTY degrees before a front blew through and we dropped down to FIFTEEN last night. That's just not normal. There's something really funky going on with our weather and I think people are crazy if they don't believe catastrophic climate change is right around the corner.

Syriana

I saw it last night and it scared me, mostly because I started to think about what's going to happen when, not if, the world runs out of oil. This country's infrastructure depends so heavily on oil and I cannot imagine the recession we'll experience if technologies for alternative energy sources don't exist when oil starts approaching $100 and $200 a barrel. I actually had nightmares, but I think they were from the frozen pizza I ate at 11:30 before I went to bed. Also, I slept for 11.5 hours last night. It was delicious.

The Quarterlife Crisis

After that post the other day, when I was talking about how I love buildings, you might have been fooled into thinking that I have things figured out. But no! Over the weekend, I think I decided that I want to take the patent bar (I rescheduled it for mid-April so I have two months to get my act together) and now I'm leaning towards pursuing patent law... or something. I just feel like it would be silly not to sit for an exam that I'm qualified for and would help me get back into the city more quickly.

Why can't I make up my mind? Yeah, I'm a Libra, but this is ridiculous. I feel like every day I keep flip flopping about my career choices and the direction my life is heading. The the only thing I know for sure right now is that I want to live and work in New York. Maybe I should focus on making that happen and everything else will fall into place. Or maybe this uncertainty is just part of the quarterlife crisis. Or maybe I'm just crazy. I don't know.

My Law Firm

Is open for business tomorrow! At least the traffic won't be too bad.

If You Haven't Seen It Already...

2006-02-16T15:15:00.000-05:00

This is just amazing.

Valentine's Day for an Engineering Nerd

2006-02-15T23:12:00.000-05:00

Last night we had dinner at this pizza place in Times Square. (Yes, Marsha is back in the picture and things are going well, so that's good). It's in what used to be a church, and we sat at a wooden booth that they seemed to have converted from a set of pews. The main dining room has this beautiful black and white mural of Manhattan on one of its walls and the ceilings are extremely high. I'd eaten there before, in the upstairs area, and I seem to recall that part of the dining room as being in what used to be a choir loft. In any event, it's a really cool little restaurant and the pizza is pretty good too.

Afterwards we headed over to the revolving restaurant/bar on the 48th floor of the Marriot Marquis. It's kind of a tourist trap, particularly on a night like Valentine's Day, but the view is spectacular and it's fun in a cruise shippish sort of way to sit there as you spin around (very slowly, though, 360 degrees takes a whole hour).

Anyway, I'm a huge nerd when it comes to architecture and engineering, so part of me was thinking about how cool it was to eat pizza in a converted church and knock back a few cocktails in between the Bertlesmann Building and Worldwide Plaza. Staring out the window into the skyline reminded me of how much I miss Manhattan and how much I love buildings. It got me thinking about what the hell I'm doing with my law degree.

I went to law school because I wanted to eventually switch from the general contractor's side of construction, where I worked for two years, over to the owner/developer's side. I worked with some great people who taught me a lot about the business, but from my point of view the contractor played too small a role in the overall life cycle of the building. He gets to build it, sure, but that's it. He's constantly under the thumb of the owner, who gets to choose the architect and the rest of the project team, procure the financing, look for tenants, and most importantly collect the rent check every month. After the contractor turns the building over to the owner, his job is basically done and he never gets to go inside it ever again. When we finished the building I was working on, I figured a law degree would be a good next step towards making that crossover.

It's funny because Professor Bowman's blog discusses a lot of what I've been thinking these days, and much of what he writes is applicable to anyone, not just the fledgling attorney. Life is definitely short and you need and deserve to do whatever it takes to make yourself happy. I remember reading somewhere that you don't achieve happiness by reaching whatever your goal is, but instead experience it just by taking steps to get there in the first place. I agree with that, but right now I don't feel like I'm actively doing anything to pursue what I want. I feel like I got distracted in law school somehow, sidetracked from the goal I had of someday working for a developer and eventually running my own real estate company. Love was definitely in the air last night- for a building nerd like me midtown Manhattan is heaven- but I guess I need to figure out some way to fuse that love with the practical skills I (supposedly) have as an attorney. That makes developing the "plans" I talked about a few posts ago an absolute imperative.

I guess what I'm getting at is that as I creep closer and closer towards my very late 20s, I feel like the window of building the career that I want, in the place that I want, is starting to close. I'm not unhappy with my life right now, just nervous that by the time I take the plunge and make a serious change in my job and my living situation, it might be too late.

Happy Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T11:02:00.000-05:00

The winners of this competition are chosen "on the basis of originality and style."

I hope everyone has a great day. I'm, surprisingly, heading through the tunnel and into the city tonight for dinner and drinks.

I Survived the Blizzard of '06

2006-02-13T09:29:00.000-05:00

After an extremely mild January here in New Jersey, we got absolutely hammered overnight on Saturday with an unbelievable amount of snow. At one point something like ten inches fell in an hour. Don't worry, my firm is open today and I made it here on time.

There's an interesting post today over at morepartnerincome about law firm recruiting that's worth checking out.

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend.

This Would Be Good for Hockey

2006-02-11T13:06:00.000-05:00

I was discussing the possibility of outdoor hockey at Giants Stadium with my officemate yesterday and it seems like more than a coincidence that I just stumbled across this article on the same subject.

A Firm That Gets It

2006-02-11T00:02:00.000-05:00

I've only been a lawyer for inside of six months, but I feel confident in saying that we'll see more and more firms doing this in the not too distant future.

More Thoughts on the Quarterlife Crisis

2006-02-10T12:03:00.000-05:00

Comments from a friend about my quarterlife crisis post from a few days ago:

"I agree to a point. Because it isn't that there is no endpoint, it's that you can't see the endpoint until it has rushed past you. Let me tell you something, I am 1 week away from being 28, I've been at a temp job for 11 months and I'm engaged . . . I hit that endpoint. I'm in the real world. And it sucks (except being engaged, which is great). And i didn't notice when it happened. It's like driving down a highway at night and realizing you missed your exit. You didn't see it, you don't know how far back it is, but you know you missed it and you know you're fucked."

Amen.

Somewhat Depressing Yet Sadistically Fun

2006-02-10T10:36:00.000-05:00

If you work in a law firm, definitely check out this link:

http://www.envoyglobal.net/jdbliss/test/calculator2.htm

Gretzky Gambling Fiasco

2006-02-10T08:40:00.000-05:00

I'm a huge fan of the National Hockey League. My team is the New York Rangers (went through the Lincoln Tunnel on Wednesday night with a buddy of mine to the game against Ottawa, they won 5-1, it was awesome) and we've all been very pleasantly surprised by how good they've been this year. They're in first place in the Atlantic Division right now heading into a home and home against Toronto this weekend before the NHL shuts down for the Olympics through the end of February.

Anyway, the gambling ring that Wayne Gretzky's wife apparently placed bets through has been the discussion subject of choice on the sports talk radio stations here in New York since the story broke. Most of the hosts and callers think it's a black eye for the league as it continues to try and rebound from the lockout that wiped out last season, particularly right before the players head to the Olympics.

My feeling on the subject is that few, if any, casual sports fans even knew that Gretzky was still connected with the NHL (he's part-owner and head coach of the Phoenix Coyotes). I'm pretty sure those same people probably didn't even know there was a team in Phoenix. This story has been plastered all over the media, forced radio shows that rarely discuss hockey to interview various NHL employees, and put the league in the spotlight right before its glamour event- the Olympics- starts this weekend. Unless this investigation gets much worse- right now they're saying that Janet Jones (his wife) will probably only serve as a witness in the case against Rick Tocchet, the former player who took the illegal bets- in terms of implicating Gretkzy, I think the publicity, even though it's bad, is ultimately going to be good for the league. Yes, it's a mess for Gretzky and his wife, and I hope things work out for them, but I just don't think the broader implications of the scandal are as bad for the NHL as everyone in the media seems to think they'll be.

We'll just have to see how it all plays out. In the meantime, go Rangers.

And the Walls Come Tumblin' Down

2006-02-08T09:30:00.000-05:00

I think one of the most difficult things about graduating from school at any level is training yourself to think outside of the framework of the academic year. I still find myself, even after spending two years between college and law school in "the real world," referring to September of 2006 as "next year" and planning my future career moves around an academic calendar that doesn't exist for me anymore. It's very difficult, though, to break old habits, particularly when your life has been structured around something as regimented as academia for twenty years.

When I was living in the city after college for those two years before law school, I kept this little newspaper article that my mom had given me on the bulletin board above my desk in my bedroom. It was titled "10 Secrets to Success" or something like that, and each "secret" was just a little blurb about career planning. There are several that I still remember- I have no idea where the article disappeared to- but the one that I've been thinking about a lot lately has to do with outlining one-year, three-year, and five-year plans for yourself in terms of career goals and other things you want to accomplish within those time frames.

I know there are a lot of twenty-somethings out there who have it much more together than I do, but I can't help but think a lot of people feel like they're drifting after college or graduate school. I know that's the best way to describe how I've been feeling lately. There's no clearly defined endpoint anymore, no fixed date where our lives as we know them will end abruptly and we'll be forced, like it or not, out into the real world. I could work at my current job, in theory, for the next forty years, and for older generations that's exactly what happened. You graduated- whether it was high school, college, or graduate school- and then you went to work until you retired. The end. That's not the case anymore, and that's why I think it's so critical to have a plan, even if it's constantly changing, to give your life as a twenty-something a bit of the structure it knew for most of its existence.

That being said, I think I'm going to try and draw up those plans for myself in the next several days. I'll post them, and ask for your thoughts.

In the meantime, it's back to document review.

Seattle 21, Pittsburgh 17

2006-02-05T14:17:00.000-05:00

You heard it here first.

Enjoy the game, everyone!

Book Review Friday

2006-02-03T08:52:00.000-05:00

I don't like this book.

It's called Quarterlife Crisis. I'm not telling you not to read it. In fact, it's kind of interesting. It's just not really . . . a book. The girls who wrote it basically interviewed a bunch of twenty-somethings and summarized what they had to say about life, jobs, relationships, money, etc. after college. They wrote a sequel, which I haven't read, but in the first book there's very little in the way of practical advice about how to "find yourself" in your twenties (according to Amazon, the sequel is written in essentially the same format). Yeah, it's great that everyone else out there is confused too, but there's got to be somebody that's figured it all out and can actually offer some constructive advice to people who feel like they're drifting.

I do commend the authors of the series for for at least injecting the quarterlife crisis, to a certain extent, into pubilc discourse. I just hope I'm the one who writes the next book discussing it- but not until I'm 30.

What's in a Career?

2006-02-02T08:47:00.000-05:00

Is there some unwritten rule that we're required to have one, and only one, "career?"

I really can't say there's something in particular that I'm interested in pursuing for the rest of my life. The problem isn't that I'm lazy, or that I don't care about serious things, or that I don't have any passion. I just can't imagine focusing on one subject, one discrete area of law for the next forty years. I like the law, and I think I could potentially be happy in the long run as a practicing attorney, but only on my terms (hours, office location, practice area, etc.), which might be an unrealistic expectation.

On top of that, though, there's so much other . . . stuff that interests me. I love buildings and architecture and urban planning, but I don't think I want to invest more time and money into becoming some sort of architect. I enjoyed my construction job a lot at times, but there's no way I'd ever go back to the position I held. I could see myself back at a construction company or real estate developer as a lawyer or in some sort of executive capacity, but in one place, in one position, trying to climb the corporate ladder for the rest of my life? No way.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it wouldn't suprise me if I consistently jumped from job to job and "career" to "career." I think a lot of people in our generation feel the same way. And, to be honest, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Outside the Box

2006-01-30T13:47:00.000-05:00

This is the kind of thinking that gets you a promotion.

Slow afternoon at work. My "Monday Morning Fog" has morphed into "Monday Afternoon Fog."

The Rangers are on OLN tonight. The Cablevision package my parents have doesn't carry OLN. This is going to force me either to watch out at the bar in town or just skip the game entirely and go work out. Neither option is really attractive. Blah. I can't believe it's not even 2PM yet.

New Year, New Site

2006-01-28T14:34:00.000-05:00

For a variety of reasons, I decided to start from scratch. I thought scrapping the old format and going with something new and fresh was the first step- thanks to my friend Lis for making me a very official looking logo. I think it gives the site some pithy degree of legitimacy. I'm still playing with the template and trying to get everything arranged exactly how I want it, but for now you'll just have to bear with me while I get things up and running again. I hope to post more than once a month, and about more than the drivel I was spewing back in the fall.

We'll see what happens, but it's good to be back!