(Written earlier today)
Just less than 33 Days.
33 Days until my vacation. 33 Days until I board a plane to the other end of the country. 33 Days before my earned "freedom" is dropped into my lap and I am allowed to live life as I please for two weeks, unrestrained. Unleashed. Freed from the traps and cages of citylife. I'm dying inside. Every second in this office feels like it is eating a little piece of my spirit. Each new second in this office is the loss of a second of unrestrained independence on the outside. Each new second born in this office breaks from the shell of eternity & instantly transforms into a parasite that then gobbles up what the day could otherwise be. This is also known to me as a perpetual tragedy in the infrastructure of my existence. The perpetual tragedy which is miniature to those who know real tragedy and laughable to one who knows the meaning of living behind bars that cannot be broken or serving time where there is no freedom accruing. Where there is no break at the end of the day. How dare I wallow even a moment?
There is this feeling of powerlessness that descends on me so frequently when I am stuck in an office. It's the oxymoron that has made up my life this far. It is the fact that I have been adamantly free, impetuously independent & adverse to authority my entire life, but have been able to conform enough to "the real world" that I have the good fortune to be stuck in such an office all day. That as a child I spent weekends skulking around my dad's office in downtown Los Angeles, snooping at secretaries' desks, playing pretend that I was a grownup too. Daydreaming of being a lady following my own path in life. For Christmas one year my mother gave me a huge box of office supplies (rubber stamps and forms to fill out and checks and any other little thing my heart desired). I was losing interest in barbies at that point, but still held a huge appreciation for dressup and imaginary adulthood. I would set up my desk with all my office supplies and my little sister and I would play. She would come in and ring a bell and I would say "may I help you?" and then we would perform a little theatre of office etiquette and protocol. I guess I just wanted to feel important and secretaries seemed like very important people to me and I liked telling my sister what to do.
It was a blessing and a curse. This affinity with office life flows well along the highly organized, perfectionist, control oriented side of my personality but also directly conflicts with the dominant characteristic of craving the freedom to do as I damn well please and to live without strict organization, without so much control and to pursue perfection as that which I decide it should be. To conform to a corporate environment and follow orders goes against the very core of my being. Or at least one very crucial facet to the core of my being. To me, the definition of freedom is not being told what to do. Free time is when no one is telling you what you can or cannot do and no one is issuing orders. Freedom. Is a beautiful thing. I don't like being ordered about. I don't like living by anyone else's rules. It's my life. I guess I got that from my dad, along with my love of punk rock music and everything else. (We are a family of rebels. I've always been proud of that).
At the same time, as far as jobs and success goes, this legal business is not all that bad. Working in a big corporate NY firm is much different than working in a tiny private criminal practice in Oregon. There are many fundamental differences, the main being that I don't work nearly as hard because there are so many people in a big firm to do all the little things you would have to do yourself in a small firm. Like copies and faxes and mail/supply management and court runs and filing and record management and accounting. It leaves me with everything that relates to my computer, excluding IT. So it's not as exciting is what I'm saying.
There's also the fundamental differences between working for a firm representing big corporations and entities rather than individual crooks and matrimonial adversaries. In the latter, as a secretary/office manager, I dealt with the clients on a one on one basis regularly. They talked to me and I answered their questions much more frequently than in a big firm. Here I rarely even know the clients. Because they are a "customer" of the firm as a whole and we represent their "company" as a whole, and that leaves very little room for individual interaction with a person in my position, despite the fact that I work directly for shareholders. It's just not as cozy. And there is not as much satisfaction in the results that the firm achieves, as those results are much less individual.
Still there are obvious advantages to working in a much larger firm. I am only glad that I am not nearly as trapped as many of the associates, who work insane hours and are always under the gun. At least I get to come in at 9:30 and leave at 5:30 and I still have my dreams. That hasn't been taken from me yet.
Posted by Maria at May 24, 2004 05:40 PM | TrackBack