--{ bored }------
Oh god, it's already happened. I'm bored. Bored bored bored. Bored bored bored bored bored! I've spent my first four and a half months fully in the working world, and I'm bored.
My job in and of itself is not boring. Interesting cases come in, I work on them, we hear oral arguments. We work to figure out just resolutions for the disputes that come before us. Sometimes I even get to work on a civil rights case, or a First Amendment case, at which point I feel really good doing what I do. No, the job is good for a job. It's just that having a job itself is a little boring.1
It's the trappings that come with having a job. The regular work hours. The having to have fairly normal colored hair. The not being able to sleep for a day, and then make it up by working 56 hours straight. The not being able to research some random, useless-but-interesting thing. The having to do one type of work.
I'm bored with being practical.
I'm also bored with having to make calm, well-reasoned arguments to explain why I hate the things I hate.2 Or why I like the things I like. It's often more effective, backing things up, sure. At least in my circles it is. But boy is it more boring.
I'm bored with restraining myself from getting on a high horse and yelling at people to do more stuff for the public good. Because except for people you're close to, it doesn't seem to work so well. I'm bored with considering what works. (See the discussion about practicality above.)
I'm bored with not engaging in tasteless and probably offensive practical jokes that hurt people's feelings. (See maturity discussion, below.)
I'm also bored with living at home. Yes, it's just for a year. And yes, I'm saving tons of money, which helps with the school loans thing. But it's boring. We go home, we watch Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? We putter around the house. We watch my dad overfeed the iguana.
I'm bored with being mature. I'm bored with realizing that I can't just throw big fits like I did in college, can't go around writing long letters about friendships betrayed and loves lost. There was so much more drama then, and now such emotions can only be expressed as light melancholia. I'm bored with light melancholia.3
And I'm bored with realizing that I'm going to continue to meet more and more people far more boring than me. I don't think I'm being overcritical when I say that lawyers, as a class, are boring. Certainly I feel more boring since I've become a lawyer. Lawyers work long hours, and when they're not working those hours, they're whining about the hours they work or bragging about the things they buy or investments they can make as a result of the money they make from the hours they work. At least by working for the government, I can avoid the latter bit.
But not so many lawyers I know do the things I think are fun. Most don't read, and the ones that do generally read the bestsellers. The good lefty lawyers I hang out with read emotional books with struggles for social justice or at least growing and stuff. I don't read books like that. I read non-science-fiction fiction for technical people.
I'm bored with what lawyers do for fun. Eating at yuppie restaurants, dancing at yuppie clubs, drinking at yuppie bars. I'm bored with mainstream art movies. I'm bored with the predictability of the amusements.
I want team creative projects.4 I want giddy excited feelings about those projects. I want a kind of media I can't even imagine, a narrative structure unique beyond belief. Complex but nonangstful emotions. Infinite variation.
Let me dream on. Surprise me.
010501
1. I am angstful (eek!) about my boredom because I really do want to Do Good (tm). But Doing Good (tm), in the way that I'm good at Doing Good, is not so amenable to the flights of fancy and daydreaminess and academic fervor that I want to go on. I've put this is in a footnote, because this page is not about my angst.
2. You can probably guess what I hate. Or maybe not.
3. Though I am not bored with lightly melancholy music. When I first listened to Belle and Sebastian, I wasn't so into them. I was not in the mood for such sounds, I wanted angry angry angry or hard quirky. I am all over Belle and Sebastian now. My how musical moods affect one's listening choices.
4. The reason why it is so easy for me to get stuck thinking of random legal academic paper ideas. Because at least in this realm, I've got a compatriot, a friend with whom to conspire. Oh yes, Loewenstein and Tai will be the best legal writing team you've seen.