Alright, this has gone on long enough.

My decision on whether to attend law school or not has taken me on a road almost as long as law school itself. It all began in October of 2005, and it may finally, FINALLY come to an end on Friday the 13th, which is the deadline for the deposit I would need to make to secure my place in the part time evening class of the law school I applied to near my job. Interesting enough, this would mark the 18th month of this pre-law school to the DAY. Hmmmmm….

I’ve been asking for signs, for answers, for guidance, for ANYTHING to indicate whether this was the way to go. I got in return: nothing. But nothing might eventually become something this week. Because I couldn’t get the school to accommodate my night time working hours, I was ready to write off the legal profession once and for all and finally move on with my life. But then something happened at my job. Our night work got eliminated, leaving the possibility that I might actually get transferred to a day shift after all. There’s no telling whether this might happen or not, especially given the idiots that run the place here, but it’s certainly possible. I looked into the possibility of switching my acceptance to the school from part time days to part time evenings, and much to my surprise they were happy to accommodate me in this respect.

The issue now though is my night pay. I earn roughly $400 more a month just for working in the evenings. If it came to me having to voluntarily switch to a day tour (instead of being forced to switch) so I could attend school at night, then I wanted to do so without losing that money. One of my other co-workers at least was still getting night pay even though his hours had been switched, so I knew it was possible. I’ll have a meeting with my union rep this Tuesday to discuss the issue. My union rep also knew of a scholarship I might be qualified for, so we’ll be discussing that as well.

It also hadn’t escaped my notice that for the first time in the almost 7 years I’ve worked here, a new change would be instituted that could eliminate more than 50 percent of our workload. That this was scheduled to happen the same month that I would start law school was very peculiar. It meant the amount of work would soon be light enough that I could spend ample time studying on the job. It was yet another concern that had been squared away.

Finally, Uptown Girl is a lawyer herself. It raised new possibilities for a future relationship that could happen between us, but in what way I didn’t really know. Still, it was another peculiar coincidence. But whether all these strings of coincidences point to something or not remains to be seen. I guess what will seal it for me is being able to secure my night pay even if I start working a day shift. If that happens, it will be a minor miracle that would allow all the pieces to finally fallen into place, and the law school dream formerly left for dead comes alive once again.

If I know my luck though, nothing might actually be decided this week. If I don’t get a definitive answer from my union rep about the night pay until after the deadline, I would still be able to make a deposit, but I would not be guaranteed a seat unless someone else withdraws their enrollment. In this case I would just have to cross my fingers and hope for the best. Of course, if I can get night pay AND be able to secure myself a seat in school even after the deadline had already passed, than I bloody well owe it to myself to give this thing a real shot.

If God is merciful though, than this week will finally be the one to provide me some solid answers.

After going back and forth with the local law school that accepted me into their part time program, I finally made a decision.

I will not attend law school.

I knew if it was meant to be, the pieces would fall into place. Instead, my school absolutely refused to give me any leeway in granting me a schedule that wouldn’t conflict with my working hours. After conferring with my admissions counselor, the director of admissions, the assistant dean, and finally the dean himself, they flatly stated I must adhere to THEIR schedule, and I would be unable to change it should I be assigned to classes that fall within my working hours. For $25,000 a year and a debt load that will surpass more than a $100,000, this is how they’re going to treat me?

Up yours, law school.

Let’s get one thing straight: I don’t play by your rules. If I should ever attend law school sometime in this life, it will be under MY terms. The bottomline is, you’re all full of crap. You perpetuate a system that robs people of their financial freedom, commit academic fraud by doing virtually nothing to prepare your students for the real world of lawyering, and encourage the use of a grading curve that promotes back stabbing competition, as well as the false notion that students are doing well in classes when in fact they are HORRIBLE students, and are only surviving school because of their inflated grades.

Simply put: You SUCK.

I wanted to be a lawyer for charitable reasons, but I finally had to come clean and concede that I don’t really love the law enough to survive the perils of law school, and especially the legal profession itself. It does interest me at times, but it’s certainly nothing I’m passionate about. I don’t like the idea of writing dry memos and briefs all day long, and certainly not as a junior associate slave for some two bit law firm. Reading legal material is absurdly boring as well, mostly because it’s hard to digest the pompous and sometimes godawful writings of judges and attorneys who had probably failed third grade English during their adolescent years.

I also realized my debt load would severely limit my options and would make me a slave to my loans unless I somehow struck it rich with a case or won the lottery. By not attending law school, I will be completely debt free in the space of a year, and at that point I will be beholden to no one. I can probably do more good as a non-lawyer who is debt free then as a practicing attorney who is over $100,000 in debt.

However, life can be a funny old dog sometimes. While I have decided not to attend law school now, it doesn’t mean the door won’t suddenly open up later on in life. There’s a saying in Scripture where God promises His people that they would be “the head, and not the tail.” I know the time will be right for me when I can attend law school as a head beholden to no one, rather than a tail who would be at the mercy of a corrupt and perverse legal establishment.

Though I’m a bit disappointed, I do feel like a heavy burden has been lifted from my shoulders. Now I can focus on getting myself healthy again, exploring interests and hobbies that I could truly be passionate about, and of course last but not least: finding the girl of my dreams.

Yes, I know, it’s been a month since I last blogged. I’m aware of that. No need to keep reminding me. Shut up already.

After such a long hiatus, I’ve come to the realization that I’ve lost my blogging mojo. I have some suspicions about why this is so, but I’m pretty much stumped as to how I can get myself going again, if ever. I used to blog up a storm in times past, but now I just don’t have the passion for it that I used to.

I think part of it is that I’m pretty much all talked out (after having vented for so long on just about everything and everyone). I’ve blogged about my personal life and the traumatic experiences I’ve had in the past, about religion, politics, romance, the legal profession, and whatever else tickled my fancy. Then I just grew tired of it. No matter what I did, any blog entry I made felt flat and boring… like the one I’m writing now.

But rather than give up (because I truly enjoy writing), I’m going to turn over another leaf and try again, this time with a more candid emphasis on my personal life, and perhaps a little dabbling in fiction here and there.

I’ve also cleaned up the blogging backend, dropped a bloated plugin that seemed to slow the load times here, and brightened the text a little bit for easier reading.

So, a new year, a new slate. Let us see what 2007 has in store for us.

There are times when I’m only mildly annoyed at the thought of having to come into work. And then there are days where the mere mention of work has me foaming at the mouth. This is one of those days.

One of the most annoying things about my job is the blaring ring the phone gives off: an obnoxious bullhorn of a ring that has the same grating effect as fingernails scraping a chalkboard. After 6 years of hearing these rings, the mere sound now evokes thoughts of homicidal violence. Methinks it’s time either for a new phone, or a new job. I think I’ll go with the latter.

Not that this job doesn’t have perks mind you. I get four days off every other week, have excellent medical benefits, as well as ample time on the books for when I want to take vacations (which is always). The work may be about as exciting as watching paint dry, but there’s not much to it, and if I get done early, I can relax for the rest of the day.

And yet, I hate this job. Truly, utterly, HATE it. It was precisely the kind of job I had gone to college to avoid… and yet, here I am. But now with law school on the horizon, my life would obviously change drastically, and the day would come where this job will at long last be a thing of the past.

But would things change for the better?

I’ve often asked myself what would be better: a job that I would LOVE doing, but had no perks, or a job I’d hate doing, but had many perks? I’ve always believed that if I truly loved my job, then nothing else would matter. Yet what scares me about the career choice of becoming a lawyer is that I would not only end up in a job I’d utterly despise, but one that would have no perks either. Things may suck now, but the possible future of being saddled with a six figure debt in a profession I’d end up hating just as much as the job I have now absolutely terrifies me.

The truth is, I’ve gotten comfortable. As much as I hate the boring, mundane routine of life I’m living now, it’s a life I’ve gotten used to. Here, I’m safe. Out there, I’m not, and by deciding to take a chance here in making such a drastic career change, I run the huge risk of losing the very security I enjoy now. If I end up leaving the nest, would I fly, or would I fall?

I don’t know what to do. You would figure this would be the part where God would come in and show me the way, right? Nope. It’s been proven over the years that God could give a rat’s ass about me, in spite of my pleadings for just a LITTLE direction, just a little something to at least show me that I’m not making the biggest mistake of my life by choosing to go to law school, but He’s too busy helping Benny Hinn and Rick Warren make their millions to be bothered by the likes of little old me.

So, I’m on my own. Should I, or shouldn’t I? Take a chance, or suck it up and count my blessings?

Since I now have a broadband connection, it no longer takes me 12 hours to download all of my news feeds using my favorite RSS aggregator, Newzcrawler. Obviously, by the time my downloads finished it was no longer news and worth blogging about. But now that I’ve finally hit the fast lane, I’m face with yet another problem: Too MUCH content. WAAAAYY too much content. I mean, where the @#$% do I begin???!? I checked out some blog directorys to get started, but the listings just go on, and on… and on… and on….

And on.

I guess I could narrow it down by blogging only about those things that interest me the most, such as politics, religion, justice and the law, entertainment, and what’s been happening in the world lately. Unfortunately that covers just about 99% of what everyone else blogs about. Uh, maybe I need to try a different approach here.

What I’d like to do is be able to extract all the relevant signals from the mass of white noise out there, so that my beloved reader is spared the task of doing it himself.. It not only adds value to my site, but it enables me to keep my researching skills sharp and fresh, which is an absolute must if I’m to thrive in the legal profession (assuming that’s where I’m headed).

Which brings me back to my original question: Where the @#$% do I begin???!?

It’s a good thing at least that I still have a smattering of old but active news feeds that I can start out with. Google News also has some monstrous feeds I can peruse of, and so does Yahoo. But I can see this is going to be a personal project that could go on for months before I finally build up a sizeable database of truly invaluable feeds. Ick. I’d much rather be doing other things, like oh say, fighting terrorism, saving the world, and dating smokin’ hot girls. I guess that’ll have to wait till next year.