Where Am I Going, Where Have I Been?

I am fairly certain that no one is actually checking this blog anymore since I have been silent for weeks now. But as it is a great mode of decompression for me, I am going to keep writing and hope that anyone who loyally reads might come and take another look.

The past three weeks have been...intense. And tiring. And have forced me to really evaluate what it is that makes me happy, where I want to be, and what I want to be doing with this kind of complicated life that I lead. I exhaust myself, at times, in the sense that I feel like there are so many people making the decision to just join the firm, work the corporate law job, put one foot in front of the other as we are told to do in law school. And then there's me. I struggle against the easy decisions. I like to make things more complicated than they have to be. I question everything and often to my own detriment. But in this case, in the case of my job, I like to think it's because I actually value being happy. I know, most people do, but unlike a lot of other folks, I actually have a fairly strong sense and handle on what creates my happiness.

Project finance, shockingly, does not. Corporate finance also does not rank too high on the DLS happiness scale. I like to think that I can be that person who gets the job done, who reviews financing agreements for 100 million dollar deals 17 times to make sure commas are placed in the right spaces, defined terms are capitlized, and that every last period is placed exactly where it needs to be. But where is the fulfillment in that? Who am I helping? What am I contributing to? Surely, our client. Perhaps acting as the lender, perhaps in the role of the borrower on any given deal. I can argue that in this firm I am helping the environment, as much of the project finance work that is being done is for clients who are working on renewable energy projects, biodiesel, windmills, etc. But at the end of the day, where is the tangible gain that allows me, in my somewhat crazy and not always rational world, to put my one foot in front of the other?

This job makes me feel lonely. It's what I realized about 2 days ago. It's a feeling that has been creeping very slowly over me since week One. It makes me want to be dating someone so I can feel a physical and emotional closeness to a person, because there is no emotional depth at all to the work I am doing. I commented to my friend J that this is the first time, I do believe, in my professional life (or my personal life) that I feel like I am not doing something that has a positive impact on individuals, or that makes someone's life a little easier (ok ok, except the partner's, who is making BANK from these deals. His life is easier. Thank God). It is bothersome, and depressing. To this same friend (poor guy, he bears the brunt of my musings these days), late one night, as I was chatting with him while watching the clock tick eternal at my desk while drafting schedules to agreements, I realized I actually felt really really sad.

I don't balk from emotion. I appreciate it, I bask in it, I like to feel because it makes me feel alive. But I don't like the empty and lonely sadness I have felt passing over me, sometimes lingering, in waves over the past month. But what do I do? Where am I going from here?

I have been many places in my life. I like to think that from each place where I have paused, I have taken something with me. One of my most prized takings is the volumes of journals I kept while in Mali, and the very public journal I kept on this site last summer while I was in Kenya. I revisited both of these this past weekend and was reminded of where I have been and where I would like to be going. After a particularly trying week in Mali, about at the time I had passed a year in my village, I wrote "There are times I want to stand on my roof so everyone in the village can see and hear me and tell these people who keep bringing me their children and their parents and their relatives who are ill, asking me to heal them with by touch or magic medicine, that I CANNOT SAVE YOU PEOPLE, the only person who can save you is yourselves." The last post I wrote while in the refugee camp last summer ended with this:

"But that is why I will keep coming back to this as the place where my heart lies. There is such honesty and truth in suffering, and the only way to respond is likewise. I cannot imagine a life that is void of this feeling--trying to find a way to better the lives of people who cannot do it on their own. In the end, there is no us and them."

I still feel that way. But now, in this moment, or from the moment I re-read it, it dawned on me: the only person who can save me is myself, and I have not lost the desire to feel as intensely passionate about something as I did last summer. Dramatic, but true. I can sit at my desk and feel...helpless. I can look around and come up with myriad reasons why this firm and the people here are creating my depression and angst (and it would not be a lie). But I am the only person, just me, who will determine where my foot is placed next. And when I make that decision about where I am going, I will know that it is right.

Maybe it will be back here. It most likely will be, as 180k in debt aint gonna pay itself off. But a lot can happen in a year or two. (Yes. I just linked to myself. Because I am that cool). I'll let everyone know when my footing is back to be being solid.