2007-08-02 - 1:55 p.m.
Were I not concerned about client confidentiality, I would have about a million funny/tragic stories to post on here from my clients. Despite the fact that I still feel very ambivalent about pursuing a law degree and a legal career (It's boring! Me no likey!), I think I could scrape by and feel satisfied with my life doing it if I have this same constant stream of human stories and the half-satisfaction of knowing I sort-of-helped someone who wouldn't get help otherwise.
In other news: I really like Pittsburgh.
In other other news: While talking to dearly beloved Nate Tate last night, he and I talked about two interesting (to me) subjects:
1) Is curiosity a moral positive? Or perhaps, more accurately, is satisfying curiosity an acceptable/desirable/permissable/legitimate reason for doing something that would otherwise be considered unacceptable/undesirable/unpermissable/illegitmate?
This gets at the larger idea of is there any good reason for forbidding knowledge? Are there any limits on what knowledge we should seek? Spencer and I have discussed this before: he comes down (as did Nate Tate) more squarely on the side of pursuing all knowledge, despite the costs, whereas I am more sympathetic to arguments against this (such as spiritual/theological forbidden knowledge so that such a thing as faith can exist, scientific forbidden knowledge for things that will only harm human beings [i.e. BIGGER and BIGGER BOMBS], moral forbidden knowledge because do we really all need to get first-hand knowledge of what it is like to brutally rape and then murder somoene?). But of course I prize very highly the acquisition of knowledge, so there is a lot to think about in deciding the permissable limits of it.
2) The common young adult conundrum (sp?) of wanting to *be* something...or maybe I should say be something MEANINGFUL. Deliberate living. Principled lives. Etc. Ideals versus the reality of a strong pull/inertia toward middle-class moderatism and 2.5 kids-house-dog-and-cat-working40hoursaweek ordinariness. We were discussing how first of all, it is hard to try to do anything than the status quo (duh!) and the second of all, if most people seem to abandon their youthful ideals for a more typical outcome and seem satisfied that they have done so (maybe not everyone is satisfied, but many are), then perhaps it is not "settling" but reaching a new (maybe even more mature) understanding of life. But it still sucks because we don't want to have our lives defined by our jobs.
Almost every day I think about how I want to be a writer. It's the only thing ("career"-wise) I have ever wanted to do. I have a vague idea for a novel that I think is worthless every other day. And I never actually sit down and write.
Boo hoo hoo.
