Be Still and Let Destiny Find You.
{source}
“The things we’ve wanted
When we get them are never enough
Never what they seem but they lead us to the road.”~ Sam Phillips
While I was in law school, besides bartending and waiting tables, I worked for a while as a law clerk in two different small law firms.
In my second year, the attorney I was working for gave me three months notice that he was taking a job with a big corporation and I would need to start looking for other employment.
In the meantime, I had become disenchanted with law school and with the legal profession. Like so many things in life, the law seemed different from my original ideas of it. Nevertheless, I was halfway through the program and figured I’d see it through to completion. And I still needed to pay rent, so I went job hunting.
I had several friends who worked as law clerks at the courthouse for various judges or departments. For some reason, I saw these jobs as some sort of holy grail of law school employment.
Whether it was professional connections, insight into the daily workings of the profession, or just a decent and steady paycheck, I’m not sure. Maybe it was all of the above. Certainly, there was a dose of grass is greener at work in the coveting.
I filled out applications and pulled strings and even had my current employer drop glowing recommendations, to no avail. Like so many things, the more I wanted that job, the more elusive it seemed to be.
Then one day, while drinking beer on a porch with the creative director for a local ad agency, I somehow talked my way into a part-time gig as a copywriter. Or the opportunity purposely found its way to me. Or a window in the universe opened up and this small but precious gift landed in my lap. Or all of the above.
At the risk of sounding too dramatic, that job changed my life. While advertising is not the same thing as writing ‘Leaves of Grass,’ there is no mistaking the benefit to an aspiring writer of being made to sit still and write for a paycheck.
And when you have to hand over that writing to other people — and when it is likely going to come back with red marks and comments all over it — you are forced into a world where writing is no longer something you do in private.
It is not some abstract thing you do that someday, somebody may or may not read. It is a world where words are real and where your ability to craft something meaningful with words is essential. It is a place that is immediate and wonderful, even if sometimes terrifying.
All of which is to say, if I had gotten one of those courthouse jobs, I might still be writing in a journal and thinking maybe, possibly, someday… and all the words might still be made of wood.
*****
{Let it find you}
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