Things are going...*#$%&@

My clients are generally nice folks. Put them in high stress situations and they become anxiety-ridden parasites that suck my will to live...or at least answer the phone. Thankfully, clients do not have my direct line; the front desk runs interference for the whole office. I can somewhat avoid them if I really want to.

I should explain how my office is laid out. We take up most of the 2nd floor of a very nice building off of Fountaingrove Parkway in Santa Rosa. If you know where the LDS Santa Rosa Mission office is, you know where I work. Now, this second floor is mostly taken up by the lawyers and support staff of a firm known as OWD. But there was leftover space. What to do? Why, sublease! My attorney, a sole-practitioner has 2 offices and 2 cubicles. He in turn subleases one of his offices to another lawyer. Clients never get to come back to the inner-workings of the office, which is generally good. We keep our area neat, and files live in their happy drawers, so there aren't piles of files (say that 3 times fast!) lying around. But it's nice to know I don't have to worry about impressions.

So, back to clients. Yes. They are sucking my will to answer the phone. Every time the receptionist buzzes me and tells me this particular client is on the phone, my stomach clenches, and I have to steel myself. Not because he is rude - but specifically because he is in such a place of stress that it is unavoidable that I become stressed out.

I hit the point of utter abjection. I can't do this. I may have been the best legal writer at school, but this is the real world, with real people, and real problems. And I am feeling out of my element, and like I'm drowning with no life raft and no Ashton Kutcher jumping out of a Coast Guard helicopter as a rescue swimmer to drag me out of the stormy seas.

And this is where things went to *#$%&@. I came home, curled up in bed, and in the tradition of depressed facebook posts, wrote: "Confession: no matter how much success I have, no matter how many awards and accolades I win, I still feel ugly. And worthless. And like an abject failure."

It set off a sh**-storm of comments...and some arguments. In the end, a good night's sleep, some crying, and pushing through the "I can't do this" moments brought me to a point where I could at least fake it.

I'm wondering if this is the point in a new career where it is sink or swim. Maybe I'll just let Jaws eat me. That way I don't have to make a decision.