happy anniversary

Yesterday was a sluggish day. I felt down, blue. For the better part of the day, I assumed it was because the Tuesday after a long weekend is usually worse than any regular Monday. On my way home, it dawned on me: it was the one-year anniversary of my return to private-sector legal practice.

For the balance of the evening, I nursed a melancholy ode to the year gone by, of dreams deferred, of applications rejected. I counted the number of days it had been since I was last out of the country: 504. That straw broke this camel's back and I sank into a glorious self-pity that not even the season premiere of "90210" could abate.

15 hours later, I'm sitting in my office, tabbing pages of a treatise with post-it notes. Gratitude washes over me; my mourning turns to dancing. Here, in no particular order, are some reasons I love/appreciate/enjoy my job:

1. Office supplies. This place never runs out of them. Notebooks, post-its, binders, highlighters, staplers, fine-point pens, medium-point pens, sharpies, paper clips, binder clips. I'm sure that, technically, some of this stuff does run out sometimes, but someone always orders more. I used to take this for granted. Then I spent a year at a law office in Uganda. Things always ran out, and when they did, I had to fill out an acquisition form, get money from the office accountant, get permission to leave the office, take a bus to town, walk to the bookstore, look for the needed items, reel from shock at the price of basic office supplies, pay too much for too little, take a bus back to the office. By the time I got back to the office, I would be drenched in sweat and the day would be mostly over. Here, all I have to do is walk to the supply room and get more. (If I insist on being a pain, I can even call someone to bring me more.) Instead of tearing strips of paper to mark pages, I use post-it notes.

2. Air-conditioning. Last week, Los Angeles was boiling hot. My apartment has charming details such as crown molding, but lacks less charming details such as central air or windows that cross-ventilate. I came home each night to a charming oven with warm floorboards. But the office is always cool. In fact, it is so cool that I keep a sweater in my office. On hot days, I get to the office early and leave late. I wear my sweater and drink hot tea until the sun sets and the heat relents.

3. Stimulation. I regularly experience stress and frustration and panic at work. But I rarely experience boredom. The job necessitates crash courses in whatever field the client works in, be it movie production, securities, real estate, or civil rights. I am surrounded by people who are well-educated, well-traveled and well-read. They easily and intelligently speak of the news of the day, the books they're reading, the cases they're working on, the latest technology. They are smarter than I am and I have to scramble to keep up, but I am always learning.

4. Money. I get paid to work. That is no small thing in this economy. I get paid well for doing work that I find interesting and challenging. That is a pretty wonderful thing in any economy. As often as I feel guilty for having money, I feel grateful that I have it. It's nice to have resources, to not worry about whether checks will bounce, to have the means to help people. I'll never forget the years of obsessively monitoring the balance in my checking account, but I do not regret that (for now) those years are behind me.

Whatever complaints I harbor about my job, there is a silver lining. And it is a thick, generous lining.