. 

I was still going straight when life took a left turn. 

 

When I worked in litigation, I chomped at the bit to get to work everyday.  I relished putting together motions that would raise opposing counsel’s blood pressure.  Maintaining a careful balance of likeability and aggressiveness is an art, I assure you.

And here I am, yes working in a law firm, but not as an attorney.  Not even in litigation.  I work in securities (think SEC) and I could stab my eyes out with a pen.  So what the hell happened?

I co-signed my brother’s student loan. 

Of course he was supposed to pay $50, then $100, and so on and so forth until he could pay the total amount, $800.  His payments started kicking in almost a year ago.  To date, I have paid $8,000 towards his student loan.  Meanwhile, I can’t even get him to claim his tax refund for 2006.

That could have been $8,000 towards investments, savings, or debt.  Part of me believes it was necessary; the other part of me is [*] frustrated and hates him for not honoring his commitment and leaving me out to dry.  For holding me back.

My LightBulb Moment

Then I read an article in The New York Times.  Turns out 44% of attorneys polled by the American Bar Association “would not recommend their profession to a young person”.

• My foster father, former attorney, went to teaching ungrateful high school students because he so disliked the practice of law. 
• An attorney at my firm teaches as an adjunct professor at a local law school.  Another spends all his time at his REAL passion, the arts. 
• I just got a call last month from an attorney I worked with who is finally getting his fictional novel published.

I have worked with plenty of attorneys who hate their jobs.  I just figured it was their temperament and they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.  The first time most attorneys see the inside of a law office, it is to interview for a summer internship.  It’s almost too late at that point.  It is nothing like Boston Legal.  Excuse me while I laugh hysterically.

But it got me thinking.  What did I think that being a lawyer was going to do for me? 

Give me the opportunity to verbally eviscerate someone?  Make me feel successful?  Give me a platform to parlay my legal degree into something ‘useful’?  Let me work with a bunch of pansies who are depressed because they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into?  Worthy goals all, to be sure, but it struck me that none of it had much to do with my calling.

What is a calling? 

Your calling is the work you could do for $25,000 a year and not feel like a failure.  Your calling is what makes you immune to what other people think about what you have accomplished with your life.  Your calling is the passion that takes your ego right out of the equation.

And I finally knew what mine was, because there was no way in hell that I would be an attorney for $25,000.

The Universe Knows What It’s Doing

Instead of thinking of my brother’s student loan as an obligation that was holding me back, it was something to be grateful for.  It kept me from making a $100,000 mistake that could put my marriage in jeopardy while we waited for me to get through law school, to work long hours as an associate, then to get myself established in the firm hierarchy so kids could finally be an option. 

Far from holding me back from having a family, he was ensuring that I would still have one.  He was ensuring that I wouldn’t have to put my spouse on hold while I feverishly tried to pay back my student loan.  No midlife crisis for me.

So what’s next? 

Helping others take control of their lives.  Now that, that I have been doing for free.