Lawyer or not, are you disgruntled? What did the test say? What would make you ... um, gruntled?

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Answers

Oh, yeah, this is what it said about me:

Face it, you have no intention of leaving anytime soon. Can you say risk-averse? You have probably put your exit strategy on hold until you have gotten your bonus, your loans paid off, trial experience, or until that dream job falls out of the sky and lands in your lap. Yeah, right. The reality is, although you spend more time complaining about your job than doing billable work, you have no immediate plans of leaving. Maybe you listen intently when friends talk about their internet start-ups, or you may even have contacted a head-hunter or two, but your heart is just not in it. You may feel trapped for financial, social or other reasons, and unless you overcome them, you might as well start enjoying the view from your office because you are not going anywhere.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Beth, maybe I'm being presumptious here, but that does sound a lot like you! (based on some of your other career-related posts).

Is there a non-lawyer version of this test anywhere?

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Oh, I know, but as I said on the other topic, you incur so many student loans as a lawyer that it's hard to give up a lawyer salary until they're all gone.

I haven't been able to find another profession that pays even half of what I make now, and I have no interest in any other area of law. Once my loans are paid off, I'll have a lot more options.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Actually - that sounded quite rude on re-reading (note to self: re- read before submitting) - I meant, you sound a little disgruntled, and that seems to reaffirm it.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Nah, not rude. I couldn't find a non-lawyer version of that one, but here's another: Are you afraid of success?

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

I considered law school for a while, probably for the first year or two I was out of college I gave it a lot of serious thought. I'm especially impressed by the National Lawyers Guild who are often on the front lines with us radical rank and filers.

Beth's journal has put to sleep any idea that law might be a good career for me. I actually *like* what I do and am shopping around to find more challenges.

I took the first few questions of the test but they were really law- specific so I gave up. I also seem to have a problem with multiple choice tests where none of the answers fit me.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

I'm pleased to report I'm not afraid of success (no shocks there, then). Specifically:

you seem to have a healthy outlook on the pressures that accompany success. As we all know, achievement leads to greater responsibilities. While assuming new challenges can sometimes feel intimidating, you seem to have a confidence in your ability to grow with these changes. Perhaps you recognize that perfection is an elusive goal, and that hard work always leads to something good; or perhaps you're already perfect! In any case, your attitude towards success is a very positive one.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

I have vocational disenchantment.

One time the Journal of the Society for Technical Communication polled its members, and concluded that an information developer who wanted to get ahead had the following choices:

--Become a manager. --Become an engineer, or a programmer. --Transfer into a related field, like training, and still do a little writing. --Remain a writer, forsake advancement, fight burnout.

I chose the last option and burnout won.

I have written everything I can write, at my job, and it's guideline and checklist. Trivial and repetitious. Tedious.

I've become like the old time-servers I used to curl my lip at.

It's time to change, but I can't make as much money doing anything else, and I'm too old to learn anything difficult.

I'm not just too old for the factories. I'm too old for the offices.

I can see why companies get rid of people like me when they rebalance the workforce.

The two main emotions I feel, connected with my job, are guilt and fear. Guilt that I have let myself become so unprofessional, and fear that I will be confronted.

In flush times you can slide, but when lean times come, people remember you weren't an enthusiastic and sincere company person. You didn't even try to fake it. You were the grasshopper sneering at the ant.

If I didn't have my own writing, after work, as stimulation, I don't know what I do.

Writing--real writing, not filling in somebody else's template--is invigorating, not tiring. It's revivifying.

It makes the ordeal bearable.

"Let us look," Picasso said, "to the drama of the man. It's van Gogh's agony that matters--all the rest is sham."

Most artists can't live off the sale of their work. I am lucky I can hold a day job, to pay the bills. The job lets me keep my writing pure.

Duchamp said the great man of tomorrow in art must go underground, to keep from having to integrate himself into the money society.

My job subsidizes my art. So far, I have been able to keep them happy, and find another job, when I lost the one I had.

Nothing focuses your attention like the sack.

It's a motivator. A wake-up call.

Fear of the sack keeps modern, Western man in line, Orwell said.

I want to do just enough to keep them happy, but not too little, and not too much, because I don't have any to spare, running flat-out at work, at home, and in my writing, as I am.

What can I give up?

The writing? Earning a living? Doing my share at home?

My life is wearing me away, like the nutmeg wears the nutmeg grater down.

I have no one to blame but myself.

This is the life I chose.

Made for myself, through conscious choice. Informed choice.

Might as well be cheerful.

Optimistic.

I've had it worse.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

It is presumptuous of me to compare myself to van Gogh.

But my idea of an online journal is being able to write in it like van Gogh wrote to Gauguin, or Melville wrote to Hawthorne (dollars damn me).

Take a man who writes as much as I do, refuse to publish a word of it, so he has to work, and see if he isn't a tormented soul, whether he's as good as another writer or not. Even a bad writer needs the same things any writer needs, namely time to write and a place to send the work when done, a place that will provide the workman with his meat. Lacking those, he's in a pickle, and fatigue exacerbates it.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Naah, I'm not disgruntled. I'm definitely not doing what I want to be doing when I'm forty, either. It's hard to think of anything that has less impact on the planet than being a member of a team that's fighting one company to put a few million dollars in the pocket of another company. The pay is good, but I'd take as much satisfaction in doing the crosswords all day. My ambition is to save up a few dollars, and find a job doing something with a little more impact on the planet. I think most Manhattan lawyers have that sort of dream.

I have to tell you, it always makes me sneer when the press covers some rich kid who decided to be a DA: "John F. Kennedy, Jr., foregoing the lure of . . . has decided to joint the Manhattan DA . . ." There's probably not a civil defense attorney in Manhattan who wouldn't run off today to join the D.A.'s office, or the ACLU or Anti-Defamation League legal department if they had a family fortune to help them do that important job and still pay $2500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Disgruntled? Me? You bet your bippy! I didn't need a test to tell me that. I don't like what I do at all, but for a while it was ok because I worked with people I liked. Then we got reorganized in such a way that made no sense, then my boss was laid off, then we were reoganized again and I'm working for a woman I don't like at all who is moving me to another cube so she can keep an eye on me.

Thing is, she has a reason to want to keep an eye on me. My current cubicle is near the door and she has no idea when I come in or leave. So I've been coming in rather late (but leaving either at my appointed time or afterwards). The only reason I'm like this, though, is because I'm so friggin' unhappy working for her and I'm in a job that's slowly killing me. I've never been like this with any of my other bosses.

On the bright side, I've finally gotten off of my comfy ass and I'm actively looking for another job, and there are some possibilities. So keep your fingers crossed for me!

Working on websites for entertainment companies or being involved in theatre, television or film production in some capacity would gruntle me right up. So would getting back into my first love, acting. To that end I've sent out a whole bunch of headshots and resumes and have actually gotten a call to come into a casting call. WooHoo! (Last week was the first time I ever sent out headshots, and it's from that batch that I got my call.)

So I'm finally working my way back to being gruntled. It's about damn time!

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Bah. I don't need any damn test to tell me if I'm disgruntled or not. All I need is an encounter with social security like I had this morning and I know straight away that I fall down heavily on the "disgruntled" end of the scale.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

Heh! The name of my work bowling team is The Disgruntled Employees...Kinda says it all...

-- Anonymous, May 19, 2000