Month: December 2008

Movies I Saw in 2008

I saw the following movies in the theater in 2008:

  • 27 Dresses
  • Rambo
  • 21
  • Leatherheads
  • Forgetting Sarah Marshall
  • Iron Man
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
  • Get Smart
  • The Dark Knight
  • The Pineapple Express
  • Tropic Thunder
  • Vicky Christina Barcelona
  • Burn After Reading
  • Eagle Eye
  • Religulous
  • Flash of Genius
  • How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
  • W.
  • Quantum of Solace
  • Twilight
  • Four Christmases
  • Kenny
  • Gonzo

I saw the following movies that were released in theaters in 2008 on DVD:

  • A Lawyer Walks into a Bar
  • The Bank Job
  • Made of Honor
  • Sex and the City
  • Recount

My Daily Routine

I am a student, which makes me many things. The upside to being a student is the flexible schedule. I may have three days of early classes and four days off. I may have to get up at 7am three days and be able to sleep until noon (which I don’t like doing) the other four days.

The downside of being a student is the lack of routine. I don’t like the splatter-paint approach to getting things done. There is little lead time allowed when I need to remember five to ten cases worth of reading for the next day’s class. Thus, reading ahead is a thing of the past, replaced with a chaotic sprint reading session that leaves me burned out. Being burned out everyday gets old, but that is the approach that has come to work for me over the past two years of studying the law.

I don’t want routine, so much as the ability to sit in silence when I need to. I read best very early in the morning. From 5am to 8am. During these hours there are no possible distractions. But it is more than that. I am able to hone in and read efficiently. My well-rested mind is fresh and receptive to the words on the page. As the day runs on, my ability and desire to read anything greatly diminishes.

I am most creative and write best late at night. From 10pm to 3am. I discovered this in undergrad when, regardless of early classes, and sometimes because of them if there was a deadline to meet, I would write just to write with a single favorite song on repeat and the lights turned off. It was during these hours that I could develop a rhythm and maintain a flow — two very cliche words, I know. There is more possibility for me in the silence of the night than there is in the rushed noise of the day.

My writing is not an efficient process. I am neither quick nor accurate on my first attempts at expressing what I have to say. Instead, I chip away. I love reading what I write. I like hearing it in my head and out loud. A successful phrase is the catalyst of my insomnia.

Aside from studying, writing, and other work, my day is, as I have said above, often scrambled. I make a point to eat breakfast and dinner. A snack suffices between. Since the beginning of this past summer I have worked out semi-regularly (far more regularly than ever before in my life). I appreciate the workouts. They relieve stress and tire me out.

This post was inspired by what may be my new favorite blog — Daily Routines — which collects insights into the daily routines of writers, artists, and other interesting people.

Blogging Regrets

I’ll admit that in my four years as an amateur blogger I’ve had some missteps. I’ve posted things that were too personal. I’ve turned friends and family away at times. I’ve crossed the line and been to vulgar, for I am not a vulgar person. (Not in print anyway.)

But, my biggest regret of all is not keeping an archive of all of my writing over the years. Even offline, I seem to have misplaced much of my work. Most of it was post-adolescent drivel. But floating in the drivel were a few good posts — posts that were particularly insightful to my situation at that moment in time.

I miss all my old blogs. I’ll never forget my first post ever, which was about how many green M&M’s I found that day in my snack. I didn’t have rules for myself when I started blogging. I just wrote whatever I felt like writing. I linked to stuff. I posted videos, pictures… I posted drivel. If there was a way to import drivel — real gooey drivel — into the interweb, I would have posted it.

Please forgive my nostalgic yearnings. I wish I had better records of a lot of things, but that’s not what I’m told I live for. I’m here to move forward. Grow up. Keep writing, but not worry about the past so much. I’ll just consider this a lesson learned. To keep the blog running, even when everything else seems to be ending, changing, or swirling around me.

The drivel will tell all!

Places to Live

I found a good list of places to live somewhere online this morning. It was the personal list of a woman who was growing weary of the small-town-ness of her current location. It seemed like a solid list, so I’m reproducing it here.

(1) Nashville, TN — I’ve been in the area briefly. Not bad.
(2) Denver, CO — All I can think is skiing and sun, but no water.
(3) Wilmington, NC — Supposed to be beautiful. I liked what I saw of NC on my drive through.
(4) Chicago, IL — Close to “home” and a great city regardless of cold weather in the winter. Familiar.
(5) Austin, TX — Never been but I always hear great things.
(6) Boston, MA — I like what I know of the town, and it’s close to where I am now.
(7) Indianapolis, IN — Nah.
(8) San Diego, CA — Great place, but I don’t want to take the CA bar. So, no.

I would add the following to the list, although they are not completely compliant with the avoidance of small-town-ness.

(1) Ann Arbor, MI — I love being there. It’s rejuvenating, but may lose it’s luster if I lived there.
(2) Traverse City, MI — Home. Beautiful and familiar. Family.
(3) Washington D.C. — See #4.
(4) Northern Virginia — I like this area. Close to airport, good weather, lots to do.
(5) Oklahoma City, OK — Perhaps.

Where to live is something that crosses my mind daily. Where to live is easy, but there’s so much more that is riding on it. Choosing a place to live will determine where I take the bar, spend (at least) the first three to five years of my career, and the next three to five years of my life.

I need to better research what I want to do. That should educate my choice. Too much work for now. I’ll begin to tackle it over the upcoming holiday break. Yeesh! Life.

Art Ideas

I wish I was a painter because I have the following ideas, which I think would best be conveyed via paint.

(1) The hugeness of a hug. Sometimes when I wrap my arms around you and you wrap yours around me everything that seemed to matter ceases to exist and all I know is you. This is assurance – love – happiness all wrapped up around me.

(2) The rigidness of my thinking at times. How painful it is to try opening my mind to new things. How terribly painful it is to admit my wrongs. To slow down. To be more considerate. I’ve spent many years rushing. Probably not really caring about the others in my life. It’s always been about me.

(3) The distance that can develop between two people who love each other. That feeling you get when you are only one cushion away, but it feels like a million miles. But never that simple. And you’re never sure which one of you is the one that is far away, so you blame it on them while trying to hard.

Looking for Work

I saw this inspiring bit of information in my blog reader today:

Magdy told the publication he sent out about 300 resumes, but landed just one job INTERVIEW. “Every day I send out resumés, both electronically and through the mail, and every day I receive responses that the law firms are not currently hiring,” he said.

Magdy graduated from Michigan State University Law School and has an LLM from Washington University. (Link) Is it just me or does it not seem like he has to be doing something else wrong? One interview out of 300 applications. That is insane. I get one job offer or maybe a handful of interviews. But one – single – uno – interview. Wow.

I should have gone to dental school.

I’ve been ignoring a lot of negative news like this. Daily, blog reports of the number of associates and support staff being laid off by biglaw firms stream from top to bottom of my screen. Times are obviously tough. (It was just announced that Harvard lost 22% of its endowment.) The stock market is all over the place. The housing market has tanked. Jobs are few and far between.

I’m babbling now. But it’s time to get on the ball. Find a job. The best one I can get, considering the times. This downturn in the economy could be an opportunity to get started on the right track. Good saving habits. Get a new (used) car cheap. Get a house cheaper. Get going. Grow up (scream, clutch face)! Not sure what that even means. Growing up that is. But that’s a whole other post. For now, it’s about the job hunt.

Open Hearts Heal

The following quote from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami has hung with me for a few days now:

Reiko smiled too, cigarette in mouth. “You are a good person, though. I can tell that much from looking at you. I can tell these things after seven years of watching people come and go here: there are people who can open their hearts and people who can’t. You’re one of the ones who can. Or, more precisely, you can if you want to.”

“What happens when people open their hearts?”

Cigarette dangling from her lips, Reiko clasped her hands together on the table. She was enjoying this. “They get better,” she said. Her ashes dropped onto the table, but she paid them no mind.

Having an open heart can be humiliating and humbling. It is much easier to sequester away what I most need to express — those feelings and emotions that hang on the tip of my tongue for what seems like hours. There are numerous times when I have sat face to face with someone with an entire well of words that I wanted to say, but I just couldn’t bring myself to speak. My mouth wasn’t dry. My brain was functioning. But there was something — maybe sanity or dignity or something that I will only be able to grasp much later in life — that holds me back.