Changes (Day 121)

Nerboo has added a photo to the pool:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZYlQ4Wv8lE

If you haven't seen that go watch it. It's worth it.

Go ahead and insert every cliche anyone has ever told you when your life has been shit. When you're down and out and the flood waters won't stay out of your face and you're gasping for air.

Do they make you feel any better?

For a time perhaps?

What do you do when they stop working? When everything no longer works?
When everything feels broken?

Despite some of the pre-conceived notions some of you get about me because of my pics, I'm generally a fairly happy person. I love to laugh, I make funny voices for my kids, I love my wife, love my friends, love a lot of things.

And at one time I really loved the idea of being a lawyer. I've been doing this for nearly ten years, and as luck would have it I walked into a perfect storm.

I graduated in 2002 when talk of tort reform was still in its infancy. Two years later the Mississippi legislature passes some sweeping reform, the MS Supreme Court issues some rulings on mass joinder (don't ask) and the ball begins rolling down hill. Mass tort suits begin to decline, large defense firms begin laying off attorneys. Then the economy tanks.

And as an older attorney who served in the MS House told me two weeks ago, "you young attorneys are screwed." Combine that with the two in state law schools ejaculating a few hundred new graduates every year for the past decade and you end up with a surplus. Kids who went to law school hoping to make something of themselves. They now deliver pizza and sell men's clothing, all while saddled with a high six figure student loan debt.

It's disheartening when your dreams are upended.

So what does one do? Sit here and sulk?

I am so tired. I call, I email, I search for jobs on the web. And nothing or false leads.

I know it's only been a month, but I'm competing with a few hundred other people all wanting the same damn job.

This past month was been exceptionally dark. I question myself. I question everything.

I've got two kids to feed, a wife to support, bills to pay...responsibilities. So I keep on going. Keep on thinking, keep on hoping.

And goddamn it's hard.

Some of you have been there. Loss of jobs, loss of marriages, death of loved ones.

Something is always going to come along, kick you square in the balls, and take your breath away.

But you keep moving. You have to. You have no choice.

You change, you adapt, you evolve, and hopefully you survive.

Something happened today that made me realize that I can sit here and mope or I can just accept what's happened and keep on moving forward. I went to have lunch with my kid at her school for the first time. Across from her table was a group of kids with Down's syndrome and other mental conditions. And nearly everyone of them was smiling and laughing. And I couldn't help but smile a bit watching these kids interact with one another.

And I realize that despite all of thTe bullshit that has landed in my lap, I'm fortunate. Yeah, it's fucking scary watching a bank account decline and hope that a job pops up. But those two kids I mentioned earlier...they kick ass despite driving me nuts, my wife supports me in this JAG plan, and I've got friends who are loyal and supportive (you know who you are).

So some dreams die. You either wither or you accept it and move on.

So I keep moving, keep hoping, keep running.

I will not let that wave drown me.

I refuse.

Strobist info - AB 800 at 1/8 into soft box, PC Sync.