The Blah Blah Blah Law Blog

I’ve been thinking of late that I need a project, some creative outlet to pull myself back from the brink of insanity. Since last May, when it became clear that my novel was probably never going to be published, I’ve been lost in a miasma of my own making, a kind of identity crisis fueled by depression, shame, and relapse, and a midlife reckoning with the fact that the thing I always thought of myself as — an artist — was probably not the thing I was going to be anymore. It’s hard to explain how all-consuming such a thing can be unless you’ve experienced it. In all likelihood, at least if you’re past a certain age, you’ve had some version of it before, though when such an identity crisis is combined with addiction, there’s an extra layer there — because, if you’re like me, you feel so protective of, and frightened of, and ashamed of, your addiction, that you end up in a place where you’re hiding it from people. I’ve been sober-er for the last six months than I was for the six months before I got straightened out, but not all the time, and not enough to keep an even keel.

I’ve been working my way out of it for the last few weeks, as best I can, but the problem has remained that my life is without purpose. I mean, the healthy thing I did when I realized that my cozy little dream of artistry was about to turn into a nightmare of adulthood was decide, once and for all, to go to law school and try to get a real job. The problem with that, of course, is that law school is many months away, and here I am, stuck in neutral, and there’s nothing worse for depression and addiction than being stuck in neutral, let me tell you. I’ve been telling myself that I was going to write a second novel before I left for school, but every time I try to plunk away at the one I was writing when this whole thing began, I feel like I’m playing a detuned piano — everything sounds wrong, and feels wrong, and it’s hard to get a rhythm going as a result.

So here’s the new plan, at least for now: this blog, largely dormant for the last few years, is now my project. It’s a project about sobriety, and creativity, and eventually it will be about what it’s like to go to law school in the early stages of recovery. There will be a lot fewer huge political posts — less in the way of essays, more in the way of, I dunno, life-recording, or something.

One of the important things I’ve had to realize as part of getting myself back on track is that not all artistry has gone from my life just because I’ve decided to get a grown-up job. I mean, I said that out loud a million times before, but I didn’t really believe it until lately. This is not just in the “oh, plenty of lawyers write books” sense, but in the sense that a key part of my sanity is the pushing of words back and forth across the page, and if I stop doing it completely I lose all sense of myself. I spent a lot of the last half-year thinking, “Who am I if I’m not a writer?” And then I spent a lot of it trying not to think anything at all, which is the danger zone. So, at least for now, the answer is that I’m still a writer, and I’m still me, whatever that means.

Here we are. My plan is that when I’m feeling purposeless and lost, I’ll turn to words, not to naps, or to drinks, or to whatever other nihilistic things I was letting suck up my life. Good luck to me.