new and old

So I started a new job.

The transition was expected—I’ve been waiting to start this job for over a year now, in fact—and it’s been pretty smooth so far. The biggest change is that I get up every day knowing exactly what I’m supposed to do that day. And that there’s always something to do. ((Note that I do not say the stuff is always interesting. Sometimes it is not. But that’s OK. That would be miraculous indeed, if my work was always interesting.))

I don’t want to make it sound like I am already good at my job—that’s not what I mean when I say I always know what I’m supposed to do. I mean that my tasks each day are clear: read X, write Y, stuff like that. The writing process is a little uncertain, but isn’t it always? At least I know, every day, what my duties are and that, every day, those duties will be there.

This is a far cry from my last job where entire weeks would go by and I would have no clue what I was supposed to be doing, how to do it, or when it was due. And then whole weeks would go by when I didn’t have anything new to do. These things are not good. And, while I don’t want to say I was always miserable, I was often unhappy and stressed at my last job. I’m not unhappy and stressed at my new job. I am barely into it, of course, so there may come a day when my job is stressful, maybe, but for now, it’s terrific.

But my new job is also even more restrictive on me, in terms of what I can say about it and to whom. In other words, I still can’t write about work here, nor do I particularly want to. Given that this blog was intended to chronicle the law school adventure, I think it’s time to wrap it up.

In the next few days, I’m going to migrate all of these posts to a new platform, likely a free one, for archival purposes only. All of these posts will still be out there, on the internets, for posterity, but there won’t be any new ones. I hope what I’ve written continues to be useful; if it’s not, it’s still going to be out there.

And I’ll move on to other outlets. Thanks for reading for so long.

coming full circle

It’s been a week since graduation, and I’ve been doing some thinking about the blogging thing.

First of all, this blog was initially intended to be about my “journey” through this law school adventure—application, admission, and all three years of being educated. And now that’s done. Oh, yes, I still have the bar to take, and I suppose that should be part of this blog’s story, but beyond that, I just don’t know.

See, over time, this blog became less about law school and more about just me, and I’ve felt sort of ambivalent about that. But law school qua law school became less interesting—it began to seem that writing about going to class, writing a paper, taking a test, and fulfilling my journal duties was just not what I wanted to be doing. Moreover, writing about those things really risked my anonymity.

And that’s the other thing. Sure, I’ve never really been anonymous—I know several of my fellow law student bloggers in person, and they know me. But we all sort of follow the code: if my name isn’t on it, we don’t really talk about it. I get the occasional email, the passed-on meme, even a side remark every now and then, but for the most part, my fellow bloggers (and students) have not really outright acknowledged that I write this blog. And I like that. I know they’re there, reading, but I also know they’re keeping it quiet, following the code.

But then (and, sorry Mom), my mom found me. I don’t know how, and I don’t really care, but I knew she was reading, and the tone of things changed because, well, she wasn’t a fellow law school blogger, and she wasn’t even a fellow law student. She’s my mom, and this was never really a blog I intended to write for an audience that included my mom. That’s not to say any of it is mom-inappropriate, it’s just that knowing she was there, reading, did something to my writing. And maybe that was good—after all, this was, again, never intended to be a blog about my life. It was supposed to be about law school. It became about my life, and I think knowing my mom was reading it made me less inclined to write about my life, and so I started posting less because, remember, law school is boring, so I didn’t have much to write about. This blog really needed to be about law school all along, and it needs to go back to being about law school. ((I should note, too, that this forthcoming article from the NYTimes Magazine really says a lot about this topic that I think is valuable. Maybe my issue here is not the people who were/are reading my blog but just that I’ve gotten over this desire/need to expose myself. I’ve come to value my privacy a lot over the last few years where, I think in an earlier time of my life, I was much less circumspect about what I revealed about myself and to whom.))

Except that I’m not in law school any more. I graduated last week, with my family here to celebrate, and now I’m about to start my summer job and bar study, and take the bar, and then start my full-time job . . . what is there to write about? Sure, Bar/Bri will have lots of fodder for blog posts, so I suspect I’ll keep going till that ends, and probably till I take the bar. But after that? I can’t write about my summer job, since I’ll be representing actual clients; I can’t write about my full-time job that starts this fall for the same reason (and also because, hello, I need the job more than I need to be fired for blogging about my firm).

So I think this is an early goodbye. In a few months, this blog will probably be gone. If it’s not gone, it will be dramatically different in tone (I am sending my big paper out for publication, and I can see that that process might be interesting to write about). But at some point, there’s just not going to be anything going on in my life that I can write about—either because it’s work, or it’s personal. And that will be that.

I’m not saying I won’t blog any more—I like the idea of it and, often, I enjoy actually doing it. But I want to get back to blogging on my terms—when I have something to write about, when I want to write about it, and when it fits into what I’m doing here (or wherever I end up writing).

temporary

If you’re reading this, you’re reading it on a feed; I’ve password protected my main site for a few days to take care of some stuff, but it’ll be back soon.

sorry.

Sometimes things just get a little overwhelming. Right now is one of those times. Back later.

updates

I’ve updated my blogroll somewhat, changing the categories around a bit to reflect the new school year. I still have some clean-up to do, seeing as about half of the blogs on the roll are defunct. But that’s for another, not-Labor day.

movin' on up

For the second time in this blog’s life, it has migrated.

I spent portions of the last couple of days moving all my posts (and formatting, gah) over to WordPress, and everything seems to be running smoothly and looking right.

The biggest change, of course, is the URL. I am now hosting my own blog at my own domain, so please change your links and your bookmarks to divineangst.com. The neatest thing about the process I used to bring everything over is that, if you have links to specific posts of mine, you can simply find-replace “divineangst.blawgcoop.com” with “divineangst.com” and almost all of the links will still work! (This took some doing; WordPress treats link names very differently from Movable Type.) (And this is doesn’t include images; I haven’t moved those over yet. Soon, I hope. Soon.)

So, welcome! I don’t know how long the old blog will stay up, but nothing new will be happening over there anymore. Right here, this is where the party’s at.

Oops!

I just noticed, a few minutes ago, that my comments seem to be broken–and have been for about four days! This is a bad, my friends, a bad bad. But maybe it’s the kick in the pants I need–I’ve been contemplating moving to a new location, since I’ve mooched off our good friend the imbroglio, owner and keeper of the Blawg Coop, for long enough.

The deal is that I really dread dealing with installing and maintaining any blogging installation myself. Not that I don’t think I’m capable; I just don’t have the time anymore to fiddle around with code for hours at a stretch. But I kind of want to actually use my domain name, rather than the subdomain I’ve been using. So I’m researching some options right now; until I’ve made a move, though, if you want to respond to anything I’ve posted, just email me. We’ll get this thing figured out eventually.

you like me! you really, really like me!

Oh, yeah.

Sometime last night (at least, sometime before midnight), this blog received it’s 100,000th visitor! Yay!

Unfortunately, since I was in Moot Court and was then at home, drugging myself into a stupor so I could sleep, I forgot to check my stats. And since then, I’ve had more than 100 hits, so I can’t go back and see who that visitor was. Sorry. I usually like to give a prize to that visitor. (No, not really. I can’t back that up.)

Anyway, I think it’s pretty exciting that I’ve crossed into 6-digit territory. I mean, I’m not Althouse or anything, with something like a million hits a month, but I hold my own. And I’m proud of that, dammit.

me = bad blogger

I just realized I’ve been completely slacking in the blogging department. Frankly, this is not suprising. My schedule this semester is going to be INSANE. Also, I’m so busy with all the stuff on my plate that I don’t really have much time to think about anything but the stuff on my plate. Since I don’t really blog about school in specific terms, right now there’s not much for me to write about here.

But I think it’ll get better as I settle into my schedule. For now, my brain is full of potential seminar paper topics, clinic assignments (that might have interesting paper topics associated), and the organizational nightmare that is the law school musical. I’m hoping I’ll get used to all that stuff soon and be able to think about post topics, too.

Hm. Maybe I’ll have an all-request unspecified period of time soon. Until then, though, have a good weekend.

just trying to keep my head above water

Sigh. A slew of spam comments started heading my way yesterday, so I had to turn on comment moderation. Sorry everyone. I’m trying to mark my regular commenters as “trusted” and if you’re trusted, you won’t be moderated. Everyone else? Sorry.

Update: Never mind. The “trusted” thing doesn’t seem to work. Moderation it is!