love-hate: love work, hate the fucking bar

memorial day weekend.

a much-needed respite.

things have started to pick up a lot more at work. i ended up having to work a bit of overtime on friday. there is a major project to get done (aspects of which have made the local and state news lately), and i was helping my boss coordinate and plan stuff.

she and i work well together. i've discovered that i make for a great lap dog. just tell me what to do, and i'll do it. it's as straight-forward as that. and it helps to have a great boss who keeps things professional and maintains a brusque pace. no bull-shit, no wishy-washiness.

"just do this, this, and this, abbagirl."

"yes, ma'am."

"what do you think of this, abbagirl?"

"to tell the truth, ma'am, i think this is good, but that's not good."

"good job, abbagirl."

"thank you, ma'am."

okay, the conversation didn't really go like that -- but you get the idea. ;)

she's also great at listening. i've had bosses who don't care to hear opinions or feedback from lower-level employees like myself. they (think they) know what to do and don't like being told what to do. but my boss actually listened to suggestions i had and even implemented a couple. and i was like, wow. i actually have a voice here.

as a result of our efforts friday afternoon and into the evening, i was to spend this morning going out to one of the facilities to deliver paperwork, materials, and instructions that we had spent most of last week and especially friday working on. the facility is located about 30 miles south of where i live, and so the drive wasn't too bad. i only just made it back to the office about an hour ago.

and now i've got another project to see to today. there are various parts of it that are on-going. it makes me go cross-eyed. but if i can get through today . . . then hopefully the rest of the week will be a breeze.

but is it obvious? can you tell? that i think i'm . . . starting to like my job . . . ?

:-T

it seriously is the people. they are great. as i mentioned before, i work in an executive-level office. it's all higher-management. now, if i worked in one of the lower-level offices, i wouldn't ever meet the kinds of people that i currently work with and interact with every day. as a result, if i wasn't here, i would think that those higher-ups are cloud nine types of people who fart perfumy air.

but being in the midst of these higher-ups is pretty cool. they're very real and laid-back and approachable -- and also pretty funny, with a weird, snarky but hilarious sense of humor.

and no, they don't fart perfumy air at all.

:-T

because they've been so great . . . i can actually see myself staying on here and seeing how far along in this particular career-path i can go.

i'm not stupid. i'm not blind. i could make a whole host of connections here that could lead to either a management position relatively quickly, maybe within a few years, or even higher than that. there was a time when i had more political ambitions than i do now. i went out of my way to use family connections to attend political and social events around town. i've shaken hands with a lot of the state and local big-wigs (although not the governator -- yet). the interest in all that kinda died away after a year or so. i felt kinda lost, a little emotionally disengaged, i felt like yet another poser with a phony smile. plus there seemed to be a lot of people who were in the same boat as me, trying to meet important people and establish connections (although i think i was genuinely better at it than they :-T). so i stopped completely and started not caring about that stuff so much anymore.

now, i still don't have that political interest. but i'm not blind to the fact that this job, in this office, allows me to make friends with people i wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet outside of this job, in this office. and just by doing my job, keeping my nose to the grind, and doing everything and anything they give me as well as i can, that's enough to keep these friends with me on my side.

it's strange how these things fall into your lap when you least expect it.

but am i looking for that kind of stuff?

if you couldn't tell by now, my answer is . . . "nah." ;) seriously, i'm happiest when reading and writing. i'm anti-social a lot -- but especially more so lately. i'm just hating most people lately.

but i especially hate having to put on masks. i can do it and do it well -- but the fact that it comes so easily to me is why i don't like doing it (macchiavelli totally was right in the prince. i've already conquered the challenge of having most people like me without really trying for it; now, i'm all for trying to get people to like me without having to wear a mask and who won't necessarily hate what they see when i decide to forgo one.

:-T

one of the women who originally interviewed me, then suggested me over to my current boss, stayed late and helped me get some tasks done on friday. i think she has a minor crush on me. she is in her forties, i would guess, and i just found out, after a few weeks of working here, that she is also a big lezzie, whose partner is also one of the higher-ups in my building. anyhow it's not a crush that she would act on -- but she totally loves me and it's obvious.

as we worked friday evening, she made a few interesting comments. nothing worth getting into, but what struck me was just how selfless the people in this office are, on a professional level. they really do look out for each other in the most genuine way. that's why i think it'd be great to stay on here -- you just don't get that kind of atmosphere and comeraderie in many offices these days.

and it's just so new to me. every place i've worked at has always had this edge to them. it's competitive/distrustful/suspicious. but when you think about it, the nature of those jobs required the office to be that way. when i clerked for the family law attorney, distrustfulness is required -- at least when it came to opposing parties and counsel. divorcing/separating couples can be quite mean to each other, and while you remain distanced from it, you can't help but end up feeling quite fervent about the party you represent.

when i was an auditor for the state auditor's office, distrustfulness was required there, too -- at least when it came to auditing other agencies. we kinda prided ourselves on being objective and neutral -- and the agency personnel we audited, even though we weren't auditing them per se, stil could be pretty uncooperative at times and took our presence there personally. i always ended up feeling pretty apologetic when i had to ask staff to meet with me or to provide me with docs. i knew they felt like i was trespassing on their turf, and i just didn't want to make things even more tense than they had to be. and it really wasn't -- for the most part, they were pretty nice about it. but it just went with the territory as an auditor to be regarded as an unwelcome trespasser.

and then same with my last (real) job working for an eeo office for a state agency. the head of the office expounded to us the importance of maintaining objectivity when investigating eeo claims. we weren't loyal to the employees or the organization. of course, when it came to the internal dynamics of that particular eeo office, i guess we weren't exactly loyal to each other, either. but it just goes to illuminate just how weird but good it feels to be in this particular office. everyone is just friends. like, for real

*weirded-out look in abbagirl's eyes*

what implication does this have on my bar exam ambitions? perhaps not much. but seriously, i could stay on here, have fun in a positive working environment, and see how far i can go along this particular career path. but it is kind of the making-do path. it's easy, it's here. it's something to pursue if i had no other ambition.

too bad i've got at least two other ambitions, though.

seriously, it'd be nice if all my goals, both short-term and long-term, could kinda coincide and overlap. it'd make it easier for me to pursue them all as efficiently as i could. unfortunately -- that's not the case . . . .

but if i do re-take the july bar, does that mean i should have started studying by now? :-T

it's gonna cost another $ 648. i'm still up on remembering most of the substantive law and just need to refresh my memory. i just need to start going all in on doing questions all over again. i'm good on MPTs. i hadn't really prepared for them last time -- and i did pretty decent. so i won't spend much time on them.

MBEs -- i seriously need to improve my score. i didn't do as badly as i'd anticipated -- but it still sucked.

essays. good lord. my scores stunk. but what kinda . . . weirds me out is that all my day 1 scores were the same, as were my day 3 scores. like, my scores are literally like this -- day 1: xx, xx, xx and day 2: yy, yy, yy.

it just makes me go wtf?! is it possible to have straight scores like that for each day?? it makes me feel like there was no reading involved whatsoever.

what's also killing me is that i totally thought i did better on day 1's essays than day 3's. but my xx scores are actually worse than my yy scores (xx < yy). how can that be? day 3, i got flubbed up. about an hour into the exam, i asked a proctor how much time was left -- and she told me and ended up being off by ten minutes (stupid fucker!). and i ended up short-changing the third essay of that day by ten minutes and had to scramble in a panic to finish that essay up.

so how can it be that, for that last essay, i scored higher than any of my day 1 essays, a day on which i perfectly allocated my time for each question?

no comprendo. la chica estupida (yo) no lo comprendo.

>:-|

overall, i scored a little bit higher than last july's exam -- but obviously, i still have more work to do.

i should take it again. as soon as i can. it'd be so stupid to wait and put it off yet again . . . .

i won't take off much time from work though. just that week of the exam, but since things are still rather fresh, although almost stale, in my mind, there's no reason to ask for any extra time off. i just hope i can be disciplined about it. . . . but fear of failure for the gazillionth time should be enough to keep me on my toes . . . i think.

my running may suffer, though. but i'll still try to stick to my running as much as i can. speaking of, i have a race this coming sunday.

i'm really starting to get into this running thing.

:-T

work calls. . . . isn't it time to go home yet?