Exit strategy

I think I had an epiphany yesterday.  It all started with a phone call and now it has snow balled into something else.  Over a year ago I applied for a job at a company in New York that I really really wanted.  Well, obviously they didn't hire me.  I never heard a word from them.  They didn't call me and they never rejected me.  In fact, based on their online submission tool, they never even looked at my resume.  Which is unfortunate for them because I was actually really qualified for the position.  I was about as qualified as you could get.

But I came to New York anyway.  I transferred with my law firm to our office here, with a couple of things in mind.  One of them was to make this job that I have work for me in a way that it wasn't working in Chicago.  Is it working?  Too soon to tell.  But I have had a lot to think about since I've been here and believe me, I have been thinking.  There was a window where I was feeling positive about my job.  Really encouraged by the opportunity that coming here will/has afforded me.  There were even a few moments where I felt excited about it again - something I hadn't felt in a long long time.  And yes, there was even a moment when I thought I might still want to make partner at my law firm.  That moment was a bit fleeting though and now I've just been evaluating that option from a really realistic perspective.  Weighing every aspect of it.

But the phone rang today.  It was a recruiter.  Calling about a vice president and senior counsel position at a major entertainment company.  Although I will most likely get rejected for this position because there are just more qualified people out there for this one, I want the job.  I really wish I could get this job, some how.  And then it dawned on me.  I might have come here at the prospect of advancing my career, it's just I realized today that I might be advancing it in the wrong direction.  I'm really feeling strongly that it is time for me to move on.  What I need to be working on is not making partner, it is planning my exit strategy.

Some time in the next three years before I make partner, I need to find the right in house counsel position.  I am feeling pretty strongly right now that this is the right direction for me to be headed.  I feel like it's the right thing for me to.  So I am updating my resume this weekend, and hoping like hell that they will consider me.

I get it

I used to not get it.  I used to not get it at all.  I just couldn't get my brain around why or how someone with any  number of years of sobriety would go back out and drink.  I just couldn't make sense of it even though it happens all the time.  A different version of the same story.  But why?  People talk about the compulsion to drink - it's been a long time since I felt that compulsion - that feeling of having to have it even though you don't really want it.  God knows you don't want to throw all your time away just for some alcohol.  Over the years I have always thought no, not me.  Never.  After having accumulated the amount of time I have, it could never happen to me.

Well, it hasn't happened, but now I get it.  My roommate and I have this sort of unspoken about rule that she can have wine in the house and cook with it and keep it around as long as it doesn't bother me.  And the second it bothers me, it has to be dumped out.  On one day I might not care at all.  I might not think twice about it.  But the next day it might really bother me.  I might be obsessed with the fact that it's sitting there.  I might not be able to get it out of my mind.

The other night there was wine in the house, and I had a brief moment when I had considered asking her to dump it down the drain.  Ultimately I decided it was ok, but for a split second I felt that compulsion again.  I felt that loss of control over myself and the feeling that I might not be able to stop myself.  Luckily I am free of that feeling 99% of the time.  It was weird to feel that way.  It has been so so long since I have even come close to thinking about drinking.

But now I understand how it happens.  It just happens.  That's the scary part.  Although you ultimately make a choice to drink or not drink. it seems to happen as if by accident.  I don't know how to put it into words, but I get it.  It makes sense to me.  I'll never do it, but I've realized that I am a little more vulnerable to it than I really thought I was.