A Walk Along a New Path

I took a walk this past week: Out of the office I have occu­pied for the past two-and-a-half years, out of the posi­tion I have held for the past three years, and out of the orga­ni­za­tion by which I have been employed for the past seven years. On Mon­day morn­ing, I will walk into a new work­place, be assigned to a new office and areas of respon­si­bil­ity, and begin get­ting acquainted with new colleagues.

On Mon­day, I will begin to walk along a new and dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sional path.

I make it my prac­tice not to write here about my pro­fes­sional pur­suits and cowork­ers, other than to reveal that I am an attor­ney. That will not change, but I do feel it is appro­pri­ate to note this mile­stone and the new direc­tion of my life journey.

I am blessed to have spent the past seven years per­form­ing work that was mean­ing­ful and impor­tant. I’m thank­ful that I was able to help oth­ers through lit­i­ga­tion and edu­ca­tion. But for many rea­sons, I knew it was time to move on. For­tu­nately, once I accepted that fact and made up my mind to take pur­pose­ful steps to secure a dif­fer­ent posi­tion, a com­pletely unex­pected new oppor­tu­nity pre­sented itself. (Did I man­i­fest it? I believe I did.) So I jumped at the chance to make the change.

This new oppor­tu­nity is equally a bless­ing. I am a firm believer in the value of life­long learn­ing, so I’m thrilled to be able to con­tinue expand­ing my knowl­edge of the law and embrace new chal­lenges. I’m look­ing for­ward to another long, suc­cess­ful asso­ci­a­tion with my new peers.

My par­ents taught me that hard work is a virtue. But they also taught me some­thing else: Life is too short to be mis­er­able, unhappy, unful­filled. They were part of a gen­er­a­tion that was robbed, because of the Depression’s impact upon their lives, of many of the joy­ful aspects of life that so many of us take for granted. Grow­ing up watch­ing them work hard but with­out the hap­pi­ness that comes from lov­ing one’s voca­tion, I deter­mined to cre­ate a career for myself that would, in many ways, not only define me as a human being, but also bring me con­tent­ment from com­ple­tion of the work itself, i.e., the actual act of per­form­ing var­i­ous tasks. That I am able, through my work, to improve another person’s cir­cum­stances or obtain redress for harm that they have suf­fered is frost­ing on the cake that allows me to look at my own reflec­tion in the mir­ror every morn­ing and sleep peace­fully each night.

It is a beau­ti­ful morn­ing here in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. The leaves and air are both crisp, but the sun is shin­ing brightly and the sky is a cloud­less blue. I wish each of you a won­der­ful, blessed Sun­day, the first in the sea­son of Advent lead­ing to the most mag­i­cal and mys­te­ri­ous night of the year, Christ­mas Eve.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Blog Your Bless­ings Sun­day, Sun­day Scribblings

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• A Lit­tle Spice
• “Mom, we were in an accident”
• What Christ­mas Means to Me
• The Rem­nants of My Mis­spent Youth