Last night was the second night that I dream of being caught up in a flood. The situations were slightly different. But the rising waters, the increasing anxiety, the desperate search for a way out, were all the same. I�m no dream interpreter, but I�m fairly certain that the overwhelming and desperate feeling I have over the huge amounts of work I have yet to do is creeping into the few hours of sleep that I�ve been managing to steal each night. Damn it. It�s not enough that work commandeers every waking hour of my life, it now has found it�s way into my dream life too. Listen, you piles of worthless legal briefs, stay the fuck out of my dreams!
I did manage to escape the office for a few hours tonight to grab dinner with Mary and Kelly from Judge M�s chambers. Dinner was fabulous. It was great to catch up with them. We had a really good group last year. I miss that camaraderie.
The great latina judge who�s been helping me with the �job procurement plan� was at the restaurant too. (She is also a Judge M, but a different Judge M, so I�m having a hard time finding an easy way to refer to her. Maybe I�ll call her Judge M2.) So, Judge M2 was there and she came over to say hello. Which, to be honest, many of these judges wouldn�t do that. Even though we work for them and with them day by day, they wouldn�t take the time to stop by your table and say hello as if speaking to a peer or a friend. But she did. Which just makes me think she�s all the more wonderful for it.
I also got to visit with Judge M (the original Judge M, the one I actually worked for last year) for a bit before we left for dinner. I miss working for him. He�s wonderful. He�s going to be writing reference letters and making calls to the powers that be at the agency I want to snag a job with. He thinks I�m all that and a bag of chips, so I�m sure any recommendation from him will be positively glowing. Once he told me � and I was completely blown away by this � that in all the years he�s been on the bench, his law clerks fell into three categories. Most were very bright and very talented; they did good work for him and he expected that they�d go on to make good lawyers. A few, he said, turned out to be less than expected; they were mediocre as clerks, and he imagined that they were never more than mediocre as lawyers. Then, he said, there had been a handful (maybe 4 or 5 clerks in his 18 years spent on the bench) that were truly extraordinary as law clerks, they were intelligent beyond the average �really bright clerk,� their analytical and communication skills were exemplary; these few clerks, he said, he would watch their careers with great anticipation because he was sure that they�d be as extraordinary as lawyers as they had been as clerks. Then � to my utter shock � he said, �You, Jess, are one of those few extraordinary clerks.� Damn. This was a man who I thought practically walked on water, not only because he was an excellent jurist, but because he was one of the most decent human beings I�d ever met. And he was saying that he thought I was one of the extraordinary ones?!?! I was floored. Flattered beyond belief. And inspired to work hard to be even half of what he thought I could be.
It was easy to work hard and produce excellent work when doing so for someone who had so much confidence in me. For some reason, I feel so inept working for Judge C (my current judge). It�s not that I�ve screwed up, or that he�s ever communicated that he was displeased with my work. I just always get the feeling that he�s thinking �why did I hire this crackerjack?� Maybe it has something to do with MM always referring to me as �the bad clerk�? It�s meant as a joke, but maybe somewhere I think that she, or, worse Judge C, is really thinking that. It�s probably all in my head. Anyway, it�s just not the same dynamic as it was with Judge M. I miss that.
Good clerk or bad clerk, I must bring these ramblings to an end and get back to work.
Listening To: something by Matchbox Twenty
Reading: legal briefs, what else?
Feeling: inept and overwhelmed