One Soul to Sell

It appears that the gauntlet has been thrown. Change is afoot, and there is no stopping it.

Today I was told I would be going "to trial." To wit, a case I have been working on in my continued and fervent desire to ameliorate the plight of the corporate man is about to get beyond its "exchanging contentious e-mails" and "aggressive paper-pushing" phase and develop into full-blown "contentious witness examinations" and "even more aggressive, but now behind-the-scenes paper pushing" phase.

My office is "Here." The trial is hundreds of miles away from Here. It is "There."

Opening serve: "You are going to stay here and support the trial team remotely."

I was a child left behind, and it was good. Lackadaisical half-hearted return shot (only because it was required to keep up the illusion of a game at least): "Okay."

Powerful shot to outer edge of the court, nearly grazing the out-of-bounds line: "Actually, we are going to need you to go there. But it will be a while after the rest of the trial team has left, and you will return well ahead of them as well."

Possibly couched in a "we are doing this for your career development more than anything else" sort of tone. Then again, it could have been the wishful thinking of the listener. Compulsive as she is about control and knowing exactly what is going on, she cannot help herself. Furiously run across the court, nearly diving to lob the ball back across the court. It barely clears the net: Ignoring any shred of practical law firm life experience she has ever had, as well as the first rule of being a trial lawyer, carelessly, she asks one question too many: "So what will we be doing there? What should I bring there? How long will I be there?"

*Whoosh*

Out of nowhere, with lightning speed, a searingly wicked volley. It's sheer force searing and its velocity rendering it unreachable, unplayable and untenable to this unfortunate and unhappy (if not wholly unwilling) participant in The Game: "We need you. For the duration."

Game. Set. Match.

Toast, thy name is CLC.

I will be shipped off to There for the foreseeable future. 18 to 20 hour days, 7 days a week, for many, many weeks (not so many that you can't count them on your fingers, but more than are required in order to make the gesture that immediately comes to mind. Opposable thumbs need not apply.)

Officially, I will be staying in a hotel. More accurately, I will be living in a conference room, working like a fiend, day-dreaming of sleeping (is that redundant?) and longing for natural light. Hell, after 5 weeks in an internal conference room, I think rickets and scurvy could become legitimate areas of concern. Who knew I would be able to utter such words in the context of my employment? I mean given that when I fill in the "occupation" box on any background form, I have never had occasion to answer "Pirate" or "18th Century British Sailor." No wonder they say the practice of law is often archaic.

Needless to say, the announcement of my swift and sudden indefinite relocation to There raised some legitimate concerns on my part (read: just short of succumbing to a debilitating panic attack in my office - saved only by an intuitive and perfectly timed "hanging in there?" e-mail from the dearest of dear friends and the stark realization that, in being considerably taller than George Costanza, I, in fact, do not fit comfortably underneath my desk, and that any panic about the situation re. There was clearly outweighed by the potential embarrassment of having to be removed from beneath my desk via the jaws of life).

The last time I faced a situation of work, stress and lack of balance in similar to proportions to this, I was studying for the bar exam. The shorthand account of that time of my life sounds rosy enough:

"I graduated from law school. Took a week off and then started studying for the bar. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I passed and now I am a lawyer."

But that leaves out innumerable crying jags, cursing and damning my dysfunctional relationship with numbers ("Stupid pre-calc - but for that "B," I too could have been an i-Banker and my life would be all cocktails and dollar bills." Or maybe I said stripper... in which case I guess I was cursing my lack of rhythm and my inescapable paunch), and near daily hyperventilation episodes near the end.

Truly, burn out does not even begin to describe.

When I awaited my bar results, my fear of failure had very little to do with any concerns over my job security, and had everything to do with my utter terror of having to take the exam again. I felt myself physically incapable of every going through the ordeal again.

But now... there is this. There is There. And I have to do it - alone.

Well, not really alone. I am friends with my colleagues, most of them more friend than colleague really. But with the bar ordeal, I had the ex-BF (who was the current BF at the time) there to hold my hand, talk me down and help me through. Even in all the bitterness that I have harbored towards him since our parting of ways, I have always been grateful to him for his help during that period. My family in fact is grateful as well. They always talk about how his help was invaluable in getting me through that experience.

Well, now it's time for the poster child of over-stressed, hyper-self critical behavior to stand alone. On her own two feet. To endure this trial (in every sense of the word) and to do so without hysterics or hyperbole.

It is a very real possibility that that is not possible. And what might the results of failure be? It is too soon to tell. Either way, the trip to There will remove any and all inertia I have ever complained about. My life is moving now, in a very real and unmistakable way. Changes will have to made - either by them or by me - but they will be made.

Some perspective: 20 hours of work a day for the 7 days of a week works out to 140 hours of work, and 28 hours of sleep in a week!

From what I understand, normal folks get around 56 hours of sleep a week, not to mention that maybe, just maybe (and I am just guessing here) they do other things with their time when they are awake other than work. Little nibble of pasta you prepared yourself in that room in your house which is rumored to be functional for such purposes here, a little catching up on TivOed episodes of "Arrested Development" and "Nip/Tuck" there.

As I have whined about at great length here on prior occasions: Lawyers work entirely too hard. And not just too hard - ridiculous hard. 140 hours of work, 28 hours of sleep... make Jack, and anyone else for that matter, quite dull and fucking insane.

I know, I know: What am I whining about? I can gripe all the way to the bank. A lot people work a lot longer for a lot less. I recognize that. It eats away at me. It keeps me doing what I do, because when I think of that, I feel ridiculously overpaid. But though the lawyerly compensation is good, did you ever stop to think of why? They don't pay us what they do because they like us, appreciate us, or even respect us. It is all about the Benjamins. They pay us what they pay us to keep us. They have to pay us the amount they pay us because they have to cover both the cost of living and the cost of not living. And how much is that exactly? How much is enough to give up your life, the entirety of your 140 hours? Not for nothing. Everyone has a price. Mine reaches my mailbox every two weeks, and, as I didn't consider the fine print, it is also 40% less than I agreed to, given the mandatory tithe I must pay to the tax-man.

You'd have thought I would have driven a harder bargain given that I only have one soul to sell....

Then again, Bart Simpson sold his soul to Milhouse for $5. So maybe I am getting a better deal than I think. But Bart realized that he wanted, that he needed his soul back when he noticed that his life was fundamentally changed in every way - from the very mundane (automatic doors would not register that he was standing before them) to the essential (he no longer found the masochism of Itchy and Scratchy as hilarious as he should). Having sold his soul, Bart was a non-entity in every way that mattered. When he went to try to get his soul back, Milhouse demanded $50 for it. It was a price Bart thought he could not afford to pay. When he relented, it was too late. Bart's soul represented only a bankable commodity to Milhouse, nothing more, and so, he had traded Bart's soul for material gain - he traded it to Comic Book Guy ("CBG") for a pittance, for some ALF pogs. Bart tried to retrieve it from CBG, but found that CBG had also commodified it and sold it to the next highest bidder. Bart was now soulless and apparently with no avenue of recourse. Lucky for him Lisa was the soul-buyer. She bought the soul because she valued it. She wanted to give it back to Bart, because he needed it, and ultimately, because she loves him.

In this life, the love you need to count on to save your soul is your own. Someone else may be able to save me and help me retrieve my soul; but, I can retrieve my own soul.

I can save myself.

I just have to choose to act. To do as I know I should. As I need to do.

The peril is really in the waiting. Wait too long, and your soul may be beyond recovery. Lost to you - the only person who (at least now) truly and correctly values it - forever.

And so you will stand, despondent, asking the soul searching question, left facing only an impenetrable and inescapable void in return. A paycheck in one hand. A handful of ALF pogs in the other.