Back to the Grind

I love my job, I always have, and I think it is among the most noble, and enjoyable, professions imaginable.

That being said, after finishing a huge trial, especially one like the one I just did, with pretty favorable results (a client who faced the possibility of never leaving prison has not been convicted despite 2 eyewitnesses testifying he shot them at trial), means that there is an inevitable let down.

While I was slogging away at trial, my co-workers were wonderful to me, standing in on cases, handling them when need be, doing whatever it took to make my life easy (as I do for them when they are in trial). Now that it's over, I'm suddenly back handling the bulk of cases that I used to handle, dealing with some of the same whining clients who are complaining about a few days in jail, when I just did a trial that took 19 months to get to trial and the person faced the rest of his life in prison. How do you get excited about a dope case where the person wants 90 days instead of 180?

Of course, this is just par for the course, probably in all aspects of life, not just my job. I remember the first (and only) time I caught a foul ball. I was stunned for a while, then people kept coming up to me and congratulating me, then a friend of mine saw it on the screen and made his way over to me an inning later to tell me he saw me and how jealous he was. I left the stadium still sort of on a cloud. The next day at work, I had the ball and regaled everyone with the story. Within another day, the event that I had imagined happening to me every ball game I went to for the last 30 years had completely worn off. I barely even remember that I caught the ball now.

It's like that with a huge case. Life goes on, and one of it's challenges is to constantly re-challenge yourself. This means you cannot rest on your laurels, you have to get up, and find interest in the mundane again, the things that are not extremely sexy, the things you deal with every day.

I'm lucky in that I really enjoy my job, the little things have always kept me interested, and the fact that I'm not doing a special circumstance murder case hasn't given me too much of a letdown. I'm able to quickly recall all the things that I love about this job aside from doing heavy murder trials, and thus able to handle the inevitible let down.

Still................it is hard to get up for that looming dope trial.