Life's Joys

The combination of: 1) being a senior associate, 2) working at a big law firm, 3) working in HK (where minimal acceptable work hours are already 2 hours longer than the minimal acceptable work hours in Cali), 4) working in Asia (where deal flow is going nuts) and 5) working for a rainmaker that brings in more deals than he can handle (or rather, than his sole associate - i.e. me - can handle, since he doesn't do any work) has basically sucked all the joie de vivre out of me. As I noted to P and J in NY, I feel like my soul is nearly dead. I watched the Harry Potter Deathly Hallows movie on a flight recently and I feel a bit like Voldemort in that his soul was split and hidden in various horcruxes, and as Harry destroyed each horcrux, he came closer to destroying Voldemort forever. If, for example, my soul was split into 9 pieces, I would say my year in Tokyo and my current job have destroyed basically 7 out of 9 pieces. I'm down to my last two and I need to get the hell out before the last pieces of my soul are destroyed forever.

Today was a slow day at work (since I nearly hit 350 hours in March getting the deal documents finalized) so I decided to leave early - at 4:30 pm - and life was INFINITELY more enjoyable. I went grocery shopping, made pesto from scratch, made a quinoa salad, made mashed potatoes and prepared asparagus and steak to cook just before El Hombre comes home, while listening to the radio. And just like that, life felt so much more liveable. Honestly, for me, it's the tiniest, smallest joys in life that make me happy. To have the time to peruse the produce section in the grocery store. To spend minutes reading olive oil labels. To cook from scratch. To spend endless minutes talking with friends. To exercise. To read a good book. To watch a funny tv show. To drink wine in the afternoon. To organize my drawers. It's that simple. But the thing about my current job is that it doesn't allow for any of those things most of the time. Which results in unhappiness, which results in my soul slowly dying.

Which is why it's so evident to me that I need to get out. This much is true: I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up. But this I know: this isn't it.

God, please show me the way.