A new burden on the bandwagon

Here's the first post of my new blog. I admit I come to this practice only reluctantly, and it remains to be seen if it will endure. The maintenance of an internet journal, if done honestly, is a daunting task. If done otherwise, it seems a worthless one. Self-examination is not a process I find particularly disturbing, it's the mass publication part that I have a problem with. Many blogs side step this part, consumed in trivialities, or wrap themselves with trite, self-congratulatory depression. If I'm lucky, I'll do better. If I'm really lucky, someone'll even notice.

I have just completed my first full year of law school at Santa Clara University. It was my eighteenth consecutive year of scholastic pursuit, and the strain is starting to show. $35,000 (plus interest) and a year of my life have taught me two things about the law. I can do it, but I don't really want to. Now, everyone has to do something when they grow up, and this is as good a thing as any. People can say what they like about lawyers. The law is a noble pursuit; petty insults are the least burdens to be found in jurisprudence. There are aspects of it that are questionable, applications of it that are loathsome, practicioners of it that are reprehensible, yet even so the law remains a thing of beauty. It is good work, and it will be my good fortune to advance its cause insofar as I may. Still, it is not enough. School has never manage to coax more than mediocrity from me, and I expect professional life to fare no better. I take my responsibilities seriously, to be sure, but I do not revel in accomplishments. Work is something you do to live, not the other way around. So yeah, I'll finish law school and become a lawyer, not because it is my life's ambition, but because it is a fine and perhaps even noble way to support my life.

Of course, like everyone else, I have a secret burning desire to live off the bounty of my creative endeavors. For some people it's music or art, inspiration's foothold and the fuel for all the "wouldn't it be nice" daydreams. My own particular delusions are literary, relatively harmless but tenaciously persistent. I write often. Poorly too, but as Lenin said, "quantity has a quality all its own." Practice has left its mark, and with luck I may eventually complete something worth reading. Until then, and probably even so, I have to do something that will pay the bills.

I guess that'll do by way of an introduction.