Pure Poetry

Today is a special day. 
An anniversary, actually.  Four
months have now elapsed since I became unemployed.  What a four months it has been, really.  I could have, and have by many accounts, done next to
nothing.  By my own measure, it and the
preceding period have provided a wealth of experience.  I don’t think anyone would be surprised to
find out I hoped to have found work by now. 
However, some of you may be surprised to find out that in fact, I
expected that it would be about now that I would be writing this email or something like it.

Here’s the short.  I’m
coming back.  I’m leaving Washington and
moving back to California to seek refuge at home, to enjoy the company of my
family and friends, to have a place where I can rely on the support of
others.  Not out of necessity – I could
find some work here if I wanted and, in fact, I could even sustain myself on
it.   If I were really to be honest to myself, I could have found work three
months ago.  Maybe not work I wanted to do, but I could have found work to make a sustainable practice of my tenure in WA.  No, the hardest reality for
me is that I’m coming back because I want to.

The other short is that I’m not coming back to work as an attorney.  Sure, I may decide to take the bar exam and
join the California bar, but it will not be for the purpose of professional
practice – it will be to enable me to continue to provide professional advice
to friends and family, at least for the time being.   What will I do?  Well, I think that’s probably for another
posting, and, to be completely honest, not completely decided.  Suffice it to say, I will have a plan – or 5
plans.

Really, it is with a somewhat heavy heart that I have come
to these decisions, but with quite a bit of joy in the same breath. 

Let’s talk about the attorney thing first.  I recognize that this may come to a surprise
for some, but I never specifically liked what I did as an attorney – sure there were a few
moments of satisfaction and/or excitement, but the daily experience and the end
results simply weren’t all that attractive to me.  I like the idea of it – our society respects
(and often loathes) attorneys (insert discussion about necessary ostracization
of specialized and revered individuals in society here) and frankly, I enjoy
respect and distinction as much or more than the next guy.  The problem is that I’ve gotten a good chance
to see attorneys: attorneys who own their own firms and support a full staff of
happily working professionals, attorneys just finally making it on their own,
attorneys succeeding in hard cases with difficult clients to unexpected
financial success.  Sure, others have
seen it more than me, but I’ve seen it. 
The truth is, one question has never left my mind: is it enough for me?  Can I do what I want to do in that
context.  Another difficult truth to reconcile: yes, I
can do what I want to do in that context. 
However, what I’ve decided is that the scenario where those needs are satisfied
is distant and uncertain – maybe a dozen years or more away.  Frankly, it is those dozen years in which my
concern lies and is the reason I am choosing to make a change.  I believe that I may be able to do things
that I want to do and that would satisfy me long before those fruits could be
harvested under my current trajectory.  Again, a risk, but one that only I get to choose to make.

Now, the location thing. 
In some ways, this is the harder part. There is so much I want to do up here, so many things I want to
see and experience and places I want to visit. 
Sure I’m as proud as the next and don’t want to alter my course, but the
truth is the reason I’m sad to leave has nothing to do with pride: there is so
much here that I will leave unfinished; so much that lies open to opportunity
and so much I want to do.  I guess that’s
true with much of our lives, decisions we make, risks we take; They come at a
cost and they don’t come with guarantees. 
But these moves are not the consequence of risk; they are the product of
choice.

A year and a half ago when I moved up here, I honestly
didn’t really know what to expect at all. 
Sure I may have had some ideas in the back of my head, but I’ve since
learned that many of those ideas were understatements or complete delusions
about just what’s going on up here. 

The Pacific Northwest is really a culinary Mecca, of sorts,
with fresh local ingredients and fantastic restaurants and dining available
everywhere.  People are just more
passionate about… well,  everything
here.  And as you all know, I try to be passionate about everything in which I have an interest, so there is a natural fit. 

There are literally more than 30
restaurants I really want to try here.  I
love the availability of superb coffee and a strong commitment towards the
investment and precision that that production requires.  The availability of local craft beers is also
a special part of this region I won’t say that people here are more perceptive
or sensory or better in any ways, but a unique confluence of factors has
created an area where lots of cool things food-related just happen. It’s like what I loved about Philadelphia – just huge and diverse (though there are definitely some wonderful thing I still can only find in Philadelphia, which I miss all the time)

The wilderness and scenery up here can be breathtaking – I
can’t recall how many times a little drive around the city netted some view or
hidden glade or winding road that completely surprised me. I’ve really tried to take every opportunity to get around the Puget Sound region, often driving on an aimless course, just in the hope that I could find some new treasure nearby.  I have rarely been disappointed.  The hard part is that so much of what I want to do is further away than a 2 hour day trip can provide.  I want to go camping.  I want to drive to Eastern Washington.  I want to hike in the Olympics and in Rainier National Park.  These things take time.  And money.  Both things I don’t feel I’ve been able to allocate during my stay here.  Something that makes me sad.  I have half a dozen weekend trips I want to take to different parts of Washington and Oregon, but without stable and decent-paying employment, they’re just things I don’t feel I can justify.  That makes me sad.

The sad truth is that when I leave I really won’t have been
able explore any of these opportunities at anywhere near the level of detail I
might have liked to – I could easily spend another 10 years up here just to
work on some of all the wonderful ideas I’ve dreamed up about what I could
do.  

My decision to return to California truly came only at the
junction of these two decisions and with the aid of a multitude of other
factors chiming in.  The funny thing is I
think that the risk I am looking at now in making this move may actually be
even greater than I took when moving up here. 
I could stay here and “make it work”. 
I could struggle through, continuing forward without looking back,
without asking questions, without heeding my needs or desires.  That’s just not me.  I think that too much of the world spends its
life blindly walking forward.  I can’t do
that.  Continuing to walk a direction
just because I’ve started that way may be a satisfying path to personal success
for some, but it never will be one for me.

So, why the change? 
Why the reconsideration?  Why the
need to defy convention?  Why do I ever do anything, really?  Well, if nothing else
has become clear to me, it is that my life is about change and, more importantly, evolution – I’ve changed a lot in the
last year and a half.  In other ways, I haven’t changed
that much in the last year and a half, I’ve only refined the trajectory I set myself out on some 8-10 years ago. 
I’ve had the opportunity to live alone for the first time in my life and
in fact, learned to live very alone, but never really felt alone even though I’ve felt really alone.  A weird dichotomy that I’d have trouble reconciling in any meaningful way in such a brief posting here.  I have also spent quite a bit of time honing my observation and descriptive skills in sensory experiences: food and wine,
photography, even about gym time and learned how little I know about any of
those things.  I also realized how many experiences that I want to have that I simply have not had the opportunity to enjoy – time, space, money, desire, all inhibiting their fruition.  I have deeply expanded and
reexamined my critical evaluation methods, recognized strengths in my past
critique and identified areas that I could improve. 

I have taken time to reconsider and reevaluate views I might
have had about many things, but have also naturally evolved my experience through exposure and reflection.   I have begun to understand that for me, holding a strict point of view or position is a convenience I will
never enjoy and probably won’t want.  I have learned to become much  more strict with myself, but at the same time,
learned to indulge.  I have learned to
put less weight on the outside world: identifying virtues in simplicity and
depravity and restriction, remodeled my perspectives of success and failure
(which one I’ve grown much closer to would probably surprise some of you).   I’m sure someone could say there are some deep parallels to some
enlightening Eastern religion/spiritual existence (I know there are, in fact), but I don’t care –
they are my own decisions, my own growths and they don’t enjoy such a framework.

I’m not impressed with myself, if that’s what you’re
thinking.  It’s not even part of the equation, honestly.  I am pretty happy with my progress
though – I recognize the forced perspectives I’ve had to adapt to to come to
some of my conclusions and make some of my choices.  I do feel good in that I think I’ve figured something out  – something that many who read this may not
even understand.  A series of maxims for
my life; rules that sometimes even trump my most basic of social norms.  In fact, even in the wake of realizing the
incredible financial costs of the opportunity I am choosing to set aside, I
think I have gained something great.  I
don’t, however, see it as the end of any roads – I’m not done with
anything.  I’m not done changing or
evaluating or reconsidering who I am or how I want to be.  I am nearly completely certain that I like
the road I’m walking and revel in the truth and splendor that the goal is not
to reach the end, but to keep walking it: to ask at every turn; at every fork;
and to recognize every chance to stop – and even I choose to avoid that
particular stop for a time, it is a place to which I will return.  Sounds kinda poetic, really. 

Maybe it is poetic. 
It’s undoubtedly highly idealistic and even takes for granted certain
realities.  Maybe there’s an eventual goal to share these explorations with others and maybe it’ll be a journey that remains intimately personal and unshared.  I’m not going to make any guesses.

So, enough of that particular tangent.  Let’s get down to business.  "When?"  Soon.  Maybe the end of August.  More details to follow.  Or not 🙂

"What I say is true: everyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great."  -Auguste Gusteau, Ratatouille