Nobody knows

Grey's Anatomy opens with Psapp's "Nobody knows". The chorus goes, "Nobody knows where they might end up."

If someone told me this time last year that I'd be out of the The Perm, based in Hong Kong and working for The Firm, I'd tell that someone that he or she was a fool.

The Firm doesn't hire from Manila. They hire from New York. I had my chance at BigLaw after the LL.M. but the market was bad; there were no jobs so I went back home. No problem. Life is like that. You roll with the punches.

But as it turned out, they did hire from Manila. They hired the kid with the 3 year old LL.M. and a dusty framed certificate from the NY bar tucked in her closet.

So now I sit in an over-priced apartment watching DVDs and eating ice cream.

Nobody knows.

Eugenio Montale

I've been thinking about the transience of everything. Not just the big things like a person's lifetime or fortune or fame. I'm talking about the little things, like a bad mood, a headache, a broken nail. Everything passes and people move on. Or they forget.

I've been working on a deal that has taken my life, along with my sleeping hours with it. I am consumed by this transaction. At night, I dream about the papers I need to draft. While at a dinner party, I will remember something and scribble a note on a piece of paper to remind myself later. I am all about the deal right now.

But then I think this deal will close at the end of the week and that will be the end of it. I will move on and work on something else. This week will just be another busy week in what has quickly become a very busy life. In a couple of years I might forget what the whole fuss was about. That week I slept 10 hours in 5 days. What was I working on then again?

After a brief moment of reflection, I slip into the eveloping demands of the job again. I vacillate between giving a kidney for this deal to close and going all existential about the entire exercise.

According to S., this constant mental push and pull contributes to my heightened "wakefulness". I don't really know what she means, but it sounds pretty good.

...

Eugenio Montale won the Nobel prize for literature the year I was born. He must have led a life dedicated to his craft. Spent years agonizing over his work. No one remembers.

Finding God

I'm in a slump. I think the move has lost it's novelty and now I just have to accept the stark realities about moving to a foreign country. As always, I've made a list. And here's what I have so far:

1. No friends.
2. No roots.
3. No car.
4. Language barrier.
5. An entire 2-bedroom apartment (with a kitchen and a bathroom) as big as my bedroom back home.
6. No car.

Have I mentioned no car? This lack of mobility is unnerving. But that's for another post.

So here I am, slaving away and thinking what a sad and lonely life I lead (gotta hype the drama so the punch line has more golpe.)

I work about 12-15 hours a day, everyday, even weekends. And believe me, I am a very efficient worker. It is the volume of work that is tremendous. The volume would make an average person go into a fetal position and rock slowly. I drink lots of coffee and sleep very little. I am a manic worker. I am a machine, baby.

But as I toil away on yet another late night I think... what is missing in my life? And how do I fill this void? Do I need to join a Bible group and find God?

[Aside: I have two former colleagues (lawyers!) who actually did this when they moved to Singapore. In my opinion, the only valid reason to join a Bible group is to meet men/women. It's called Singles for Christ for a reason.]

I mull over this thought for a moment and come to a revelation (Biblical pun intended).

And here it is:

I don't need God; I need to buy something very expensive. (I am so twisted. This is actually how my brain works.)

I'll let you know what I pick out on my next post.

Reality Check

I cleaned out my office today. Took down my name plate from the door and took the last of my stuff home.

While waiting for the janitor to take my boxes away, I sat on one of my visitor's chairs and thought about all the things that had gone on in that room. The meetings, the impromptu wine parties, the heated phone calls, the late late nights, the pre-dawn conference calls.

It's remarkable how life at the Perm can consume you. Until recently, every waking (and sometimes sleeping) hour of my life was immersed in work. Every deal was important. Every document to be preserved, every little thing of utmost importance. I felt that each transaction was the center of the universe, and I had the cosmic responsibility to safeguard it. Talk about quixotic megalomania.

As I closed my office door for the last time, I realized that however I may felt about the importance of my work at the Perm, I really was just another worker ant. A cog in the very large wheel of corporate law.

In a few weeks, some other lawyer will take my room, another name will go on the door, and I will fade into the Perm's hazy memory of former associates.

So much for my cosmic responsibilities.