house hunting

so i decided to buy a house this year. we have quite the buyer's market going on right now, so i'll have a lot of places to choose from. i have a list of 17 properties that i'm going to see with a realtor this friday. it's a little overwhelming, and i hope that i'll be able to keep them all separate in my mind.

but it's kind of fun too. i don't think i've ever really chosen where i was going to live in quite the same way. i always just do the functional thing, or the convenient thing, and then i adapt. i can adapt to anything. so to think of actually choosing a place because i love it or love things about it is kind of new for me.

so right now i'm looking for a place with wood floors & unpainted wood trim, a big open living room area, and 4 bedrooms. i'd love to have an attic that is already finished, or that i could finish.

we'll see if i can find what i'm looking for within my price range. actually, there are tons of possibilities already, i think.

so i'm sitting here looking at properties instead of cleaning my house... so much more fun...

4 more saturdays

i'm a mere 4 saturdays away from the end of law school. one month, and it's history. it's so hard to believe that it is already time to be done. truly it's flown by in such a blur. it was only a little over 2 years ago that i started law school. and now it's done.

but i am ready. i'm excited to be finishing up. i'm looking for a house to buy this summer. i'm planning on opening a non-profit. i'm planning on passing the bar exam, so i've started studying. i'll be teaching at my law school as an adjunct this summer, so i'm planning for that. and i'm looking forward to hanging out with my family and my best friend, who will be visiting this summer. and i've decided to take a week to go camping at the end of the summer, before i start my new job, so i can recover from all this excitement...

the sheer volume of responsibilities and changes are keeping me quite busy, which is why i haven't been writing much. but things are going well, i am doing more than well, and life is good.

paid to think?

one thing i noticed this week is how much time i actually have to think before i start writing. i can literally sit for 4-5 hours just thinking through all the implications of various arguments, counterarguments, and issues. then i have to re-read cases, do more research, and then think some more. i need a huge whiteboard, and plenty of time to scribble all over it.

i don't think i ever realized how much thinking time is required. and i always feel a little bit weird, just sitting there, thinking. i wonder if the people walking by think i'm slacking off. i think i'll feel especially bad about thinking when people are paying me too--because i'm not producing anything. but then i tell myself that people are going to be paying me to think.

so i feel like i've chosen the right profession. because i enjoy the process. i have fun thinking through the problems. good times...

atheism

on facebook i found one of the girls i used to teach in sunday school. each person on facebook has the opportunity to say a little bit about themselves. so on her "about me" she defines herself as anti-God. her whole identity is wrapped up in the fact that she doesn't believe in God. she grew up in the church, was disillusioned, i think by her family and by the church, and so now her entire identity hinges on how she does not believe God is real.

then i was flipping through channels this week, and saw a cable program called "athiests speak" or something like that. basically it was a bunch of athiests sitting around talking about how God does not exist. what was really interesting to me though, is what they said. the only things they were talking about were the hypocrisy of the church, and the way it doesn't make sense when Christians talk about how God intervened in their lives in a miraculous way, while right next door someone is suffering and devastated.

they didn't claim that it is scientifically impossible that God exists. they didn't bring up philosophy, or argue that God is not necessary. the only thing they focused on was how the people who call themselves Christ followers have impacted their perception of God.

so i don't know. i am just reminded at the importance of my own actions. i am reminded that i really am Christ's ambassador. if i call myself a follower of Christ, then i need to live like he did. and i need to be very careful of what i say, and what i claim about God. my misunderstanding of God's character or Christ's teaching can become the false reality that someone reacts to.

moments of clarity

today i remembered why i love to write. it's true... i absolutely love the writing process, everything about it. it may not be evident here on my blog, since i'm incredibly lazy about editing here. but i truly love it.

i've been working on briefs all semester--i have 3 different briefs due in 3 classes. for the non-lawyers out there, briefs are what you file with courts to tell them why they should decide something in your favor. so ordinarily i have loved writing briefs. it's basically all i did this summer, and i had a great time doing it. but since the beginning of this semester and i have struggled to force myself to write anything at all. the first draft of my first brief was truly horrible. it was like pulling teeth to sit down and write, and i only did it because i had to. this brief started out that way too... until today.

i wrestled with the material all day, after having a horrible writing day yesterday, not really feeling extremely motivated to write. i had written maybe a page after about 4 hours. and then it all suddenly started to flow. i wrote the next 3 pages within an hour, and as i finished it up, i just knew that it was the key to my whole brief. everything just came together in that hour.

and as i sat there typing the last sentence i remembered why i love to write. i love that one moment of clarity when everything that has been a complete mess suddenly becomes obvious--so obvious that it's hard to believe that i didn't see it before. i love it when the argument becomes solid and i can see counter-arguments and alternative arguments to my claims. i love the art of finding the words that paint the picture of the concepts flying around my brain.

i will admit that it's kind of odd. it's odd that i would claim to love something that is mostly work--indeed, the 40 hours i put into research & writing up to that moment of clarity, and the 25-30 i have left hardly seem worth the joy of the moment when it all comes together. and yet, it is worth it. maybe i just like the challenge--it's like solving a puzzle. and every case is a new puzzle to solve, so my mind must endlessly be working. i guess i just hate being bored.

so i'm sighing with relief because it seems that my brief experience with senioritis is finally past & i can get back to being efficient about my school work so i can go out & enjoy the rest of life as it comes to me.

and that's just life

i'm in the thick of my writing requirements for the semester. i finished up a draft of a brief today, and the rest of the week i have to start writing a second brief. tonight i worked on discovery requests for another class. it's just crazy. i've been taking nights & sundays mostly off--i've had time with people scheduled & have just been trying to have a life outside of school again. but i'm kind of paying for it now. i think i'm going to have to cut back for the next few weeks. i say that, but i've got stuff scheduled pretty much every night next week already. oh well... at least i'm not bored.

so i got some really good news--i get to teach some classes starting this summer at my school. yeah--they're setting me loose on the incoming students and the top writing students. i'm really excited to get my foot in the door there so soon. it'll make studying for the bar kind of challenging, but i'll have to be disciplined in order to do all that & still have time with my family. i guess that's good. if i don't feel any pressure then i won't be very motivated to study for the bar. i'm so ready to just be done with it all & get back to real life.

my old roommate has been visiting for a couple weeks & that's been nice. and i just ran into an old friend that i haven't seen for years. we were really close one summer while working at camp, and i'd completely lost track of him. so hopefully we'll be able to get together soon to catch up.

i finally broke down & bought a new laptop. i'd been trying to just use my old one while keeping it completely stationary, but the power connection is on its way out. i can't afford not to have one right now (for the 3 weeks it would take to get it fixed), and i'm going to need on this summer too, now that i'm teaching. so i just bought one online & it should be here by the end of the week. i'm so looking forward to being able to write somewhere other than my dining room table...

and that's my life for the last couple of weeks. i've only been thinking about school so i've got no interesting thoughts to share... maybe next time.

my dilemma

so i've really taken to heart the fact that i'm in school and am surrounded by people. i know that sounds strange. but for the first couple of years of law school i was in my own world. part of it was the commuting, part of it was the figuring out how to survive, and part of it was the fact that my life outside of law school was full.

so all those things have changed now, and i have classes with several people over and over, and i'm actually getting to know them. i've taken to hanging out after class with them at the bars. i'm not really a drinker, so i'm the girl that sits there with water or a coke, but i'm there all the same.

it's been really fun--it's fun to get to know people, to see them outside of class, to listen to their stories. but i find that i am really terrible about small talk. i don't do things that create small talk topics. i might watch movies & tv, but that's about it, and i don't really care to talk about it.

all i ever want to talk about are things that are important to me. i'd talk about school, i'd talk about spiritual things, i'd talk about justice. honestly i really like to problem-solve, so my favorite conversations are analytical conversations. but i think that only 2 percent of the world's population are really interested in conversations like that.

truth is, i really want to get to know my classmates, and to do that, i have to talk about shallow things for a while. because the normal person does not just open up about everything quickly--it just doesn't happen. somehow there's this period of time where you have to talk about nothing before you can start to talk about something.

so i've got to work on finding some more nothing-topics to talk about. there's got to be some intermediate topics out there--things that would be semi-interesting to me but that wouldn't freak people out. because right now i'm mainly just going and listening to people. and i don't mind that, except that then they aren't really getting to know me either.

so that's my dilemma.

brussels sprouts, but not homework

i'm supposed to be doing homework right now. i didn't get enough done today, and there is so much to do. i think in a couple of weeks things will calm down a little, but right now all my classes are kind of pressing in on me. so i'm sitting here writing instead.

i came home from kickboxing and i was trying to get my computer mouse to work. but it's not. so i worked on that for like 30 minutes. i thought about cooking something for dinner (or the 2nd half of dinner, b/c i had a small sandwich before kickboxing). so i put some brussels sprouts on the stove. but the first water i put on i forgot about & just left boiling there til it was almost all evaporated. so the sprouts are still on the stove.

and why on earth am i writing about these things anyway? i have nothing i really wanted to say. i just wanted to tell someone that i'm procrastinating, i guess.

i just got the brilliant idea to work on a different class than the one i worked on all day. switching it up might be more interesting. so i'm going to try to do that. wish me luck.