I just love looking at my referrer stats.
To those who think I’m speaking Greek: if you have a blog, you likely have some sort of plug-in or feature that allows you to look at where people came from to get to your blog. Maybe someone clicked on a link on another site – you’d like to know that so you can thank the other site owner for linking to you. But people also find you through searching for various things on the internet, through Google or what-have-you, and stats plug-ins will also show you the terms they used to get there.
So, here’s a not-so-confidential message to “big firm awful”:
Brother (or sister): I feel your pain. No, I wasn’t subjected to the horror of the baby-shark factory. I think it must be a lot like Wolfram & Hart, the thankfully fictitious law firm of Buffy/Angel fame, in which “associate review” culminated either in a blood oath for partnership or a beheading of the unfortunate lawyer. (OK, maybe not that bad.)
But I did have a work situation that turned toxic in the end thanks to some real political machinations, a conflicted guiding committee (or council) and work that seemed to escalate in the drudgery factor exponentially as the days wore on. And I remember what it was like to find out I’d developed high blood pressure as a result of that workplace, feeling like, “Well, that’s one more thing this place stole from me!” Exasperated. Fed up.
And yet … I stayed. For a long time after that realization – I stayed. Why? Five words for you: The Path of Least Resistance.
Imagine that path in the woods – you know the one, from your childhood. Maybe camp? Grandma’s house? I don’t know. Wherever it was (behind my house, for me) there was a well-worn path, a groove in the forest floor. On either side, brambles, thickets of thorns and leaves and forest debris. Why was it so well worn? Of course – because everyone took it. And because no one else took any other route. If they had, there’d be another well-worn path instead of this one, right?
We’re still like that as grownups, you know. Maybe even more so, for the stakes are higher. It’s so much easier to stay where you are – even to talk yourself into believing that you’re doing the right thing, the grownup thing. That quitting would be running away – and you’re no quitter. But the simple truth of the matter is: you stay, because it’s the least resistant path. It’s the path you know. It’s the path everyone’s taken. And to take some other path would …
Would what, exactly? The truth is, you don’t really know. You can’t know, until you take it. I can guarantee you this, for it’s true of every new path you take: It will require considerable effort, and you may very well lose your way.
I can also promise you this: If you don’t take a new path, you will forever be where you are right now. Maybe a few feet deeper into the forest, but basically – where you are now. Nothing, in short, will change.
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