I left work last week.
After seven years at the same firm, I quit. Okay, technically it’s a leave of absence, but I choose to think of it not as a break in the sense of it being a pause; but rather as a break-up.
Corporate law was something I wanted very badly to love. At university I buried myself in textbooks and transcribed lectures word for word (sometimes even the lecturer’s “um”s and “ah”s!). I applied for a dozen firms in hopes of scoring a coveted summer clerkship. When I got one, I said yes to every hour of late night and weekend work. I thought that if I worked hard enough at a job, I would eventually fall in love with it.
Ultimately, I had to accept that I didn’t love practising law. I didn’t hate it, and I actually quite liked it. I was even kind of good at it. But I liked it in the way I like scrambled eggs for breakfast – it’s just okay, and I’m thinking about pancakes with maple syrup the whole time.
I loved the people around me in the office. I was pre-mourning the loss of their daily company for a month after I handed in my notice. I wrote the sappiest, most sentimental farewell email:
Thanks for doughnuts at 1am after an interstate hearing. For dressing like 80-year-olds at an 80s themed party. For Korean BBQ and hot pot with the dancing noodles. For crashing my dates. For teaching me how to play beer pong. Thanks for picnic lunches in the sun. Thanks for the honest and open-hearted conversations about mental health. Thanks for holding me when I needed it, in more ways than one.
But law didn’t make me resent going to sleep, and it didn’t make me wake up in the morning with my brain alight with inspiration. Only love and art have had that effect on me.
So I left. If I close the door on my legal career, I have to open another. Perhaps it leads in a painterly direction. Or maybe I’ll bake sourdough for a living, or write YA novels, or run a camel milk farm (apparently, that’s a thing). I don’t know, but I’ll find out.