Plinko

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... life. I can feel you filling my lungs back up with air and joy. I submitted my first (of two) fellowship application today and promptly shut my computer, saddled up the horse (dog) and went outside to feel the fresh fall breeze. I have spent a lot of the last several days asking myself why I continue to place myself in positions where I am expected of. Where I have to strive. It's not that I don't like responsibility... But there's do-your-job responsibility and then there's show-the-world-why-you-are-so-talented responsibility.

I guess anyone who is cocky enough to go to law school has at least a small narcissitic streak to them; some part that wants to show off to the world how good they are. We are all, to some extent, obnoxious oldest siblings trying to prove something to our parents. Or something like that. Right? No? Just me?

Anyway, I far prefer to just be quiet, keep my head down and do what I need to do to get paid. Yet once in a while I am presented with an opportunity and I feel obligated enough to pursue it, or the pieces just happen to fall into place. And that's how I got so stressed out over this fellowship. And now that I've taken a breather and gone out to spend an evening eating $3 burgers with friends and drank a few Octoberfest specials and shouted out across a bar at a law school classmate we happened to recognize and run into Best Woman at the park with her dog, I feel much better. Life can resume as normal.


I like to think of these little spurts of ambition as mere interruptions from my daily life, mere plinko tacks that occasionally send my life in a different direction (law school, I'm looking at you) but never actually *become* my life. I've got far too many more important things to do than worry about an application once it's been submitted. Like watch Mad Men with mabehbeh. But one good thing about those stressful times? They make me feel so much better about my life when it's all over.