A Few Weeks In Pictures...

I've decided that since I finally have a paycheck, I can afford to actually go grocery shopping without breaking into a nervous sweat.  My goal is to bake an actual meal every Sunday (so I'll have leftovers for a few days when I get home from work).  I eased into it with some mini-pizzas...

 My meager little Christmas tree, now with more Nutcracker...

My desk...exciting.

Holiday cooking experiment.  They're supposed to be Christmas trees, but I didn't wait for them to cool, so they kinda fell apart when I started cutting them.  Martha Stewart would not have approved.

Nice long lunch at Farm to Fork...

Preparing for Christmas and the journey to CG...

I bought myself an Xbox for Christmas...good thing I don't have a social life!  Ahahahaha..haha...ha...sigh...

Millionaire Matchmaker

Sidelined by a killer headache, I've spent most of my evening since getting home from work laying on the couch indulging in my guilty pleasure, Bravo.  Real Housewives, Top Chef, The Rachel Zoe Project...zero thinking required on my part.  I've spent the past three hours watching The Millionaire Matchmaker.  I absolutely love Patti Stanger because she just flat out will tell people that they suck at life if that's the case.  Maybe one day, if I ever meet the income requirement, I can let her analyze me...ahahaha, who am I kidding, my student loan payments are going to be taking every last bit of disposable income I have for the next 25-30 years.  Huzzah!

On a side note...I promise to try and post a little more regularly from here on out.  So, for the two of you that read this, yay!  :)

Today was an up and down day.  It's hard to complain too much when I work in an office where afternoons are marked with Nerf wars that culminate in the entire staff converging on our boss's office and littering the place with darts.  Are there many other offices that do that?  I don't think so.

But then something happened that turned any happiness I'd felt during the day and just completely erased it.  The all too familiar feeling of having the wind knocked out of me.  You would think that after a year I'd have built up an immunity, but unfortunately, that's not how it works.  So I sat at my desk, attempting to focus on the tax research in front of me for the last 30 minutes of my day, but failing miserably.  I went home and tried to push the negative thoughts out of my mind, once again failing miserably.  I went to the gym and spent four miles on a treadmill, pretending that I was chasing down whatever it was that made me feel so bad.  I left feeling marginally better and looking like a hot mess.

And then I came home, cleaned up, sat down, and opened up my computer to find a friend had left me a message.  And as quick as it took me to feel like I had had the wind violently knocked out of me, I felt the mouth curve into a smile.  Sometimes that's really all you need when you feel like everything's going wrong.  Not someone to tell you it's going to be all right when no one can be totally sure of that; not someone to help plot out how you're going to exact revenge.  Just a friend to say something nice and remind you that there are good people out there.  So to that friend, I just want to thank you.  I really, truly thank you.

Merry Christmas, Darling...

The Show Must Go On...

It's been almost two weeks since bar results came out.  I spent that entire weekend curled up on the couch with a box of Kleenex and BBC America.  My face was so red and swollen, it looked like I'd walked into a swarm of bees.  Not exactly my prettiest hour.

I'd like to say that I've had time to reflect on the whole experience and am ready to look ahead and try again.  And that's partially true.

Obviously I'm retaking the test; if I gave up every time I failed at something, I would never have made it as far as I have.  I've decided to take the Oregon bar in July instead of taking the California bar again in February.  It just seems to make the most sense, considering the circumstances.  I just started working, so moving out of state is out of the question.  If I was even considering taking the bar in February, I literally would have had to have started studying this week.  With a new job that has me in the office for 10 hours a day, the idea of having to start that soul-sucking experience all over makes me wanna start sobbing again.  I also don't want to take myself away from the opportunity of getting to know the people I'm working with, which is exactly what would happen if I had to be studying during my hour lunch break and as soon as I got off work.  Add to the fact that I would have to take a week off of work less than four months in, waiting and staying local just seems to be the best thing right now.

So I've got a plan and anyone who knows me knows that I'm more at ease when I've got it all mapped out. But as for how I'm doing...I can't explain it, but I feel different.  Sure, I've failed at things before, but this feels different.  I feel...hollow?  Hopeless?  I'm not sulking around, I'm not listening to depressing music on repeat, I just...I feel like this failure has permanently changed me.  I devoted my entire summer, to studying.  I did every homework assignment, I read every outline, and my apartment was blanketed in note cards.  I prayed night and day and made sure to give my lucky pig a squeeze before each section of the test.  I got every essay subject I could have asked for and the only part that made me nervous was the MBE.  I actually walked away from that test thinking that I passed.  For the first time in years, I felt confident about a test.  I thought law school had beaten that feeling out of me.  All of that and I still failed.  Let's not dress it up by saying, "I didn't pass."  I failed.  FAILED.  Plain and simple.

I get that I'm not the first or last person to fail the bar, but honestly, I don't care about everyone else.  Call me selfish, self-absorbed, but I don't care.  I failed and I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me.  I worked so hard to pull myself out of the clusterfuck that was my first year of law school and I feel like this just knocked me back down to square one.  I'm embarrassed and I'm ashamed that even after all of that work, I wasn't even "minimally competent."  I studied like I've never studied before and I gave all that I possibly could during those three days of the test.  If that wasn't enough, then what is?

But the show must go on, right?  The only thing that would make me a bigger failure is if I just gave up. So I take it again.  And if I fail, I take it again.  Hopefully, I'll see my name on that pass list eventually.  Until then though...just gotta try to keep putting one foot in front of the other...