Onward Into The...No, It's Not An Abyss

[A year ago, more or less, I was back from a much-needed weekend in Santa Barbara, getting ready for school, and very nervous about what the year would bring. That weekend made all the stiffness and stress ooze out of my shoulders and neck, stress I'd been storing as I said an extended good-bye to people and activities that had long overstayed their welcome.]

[As the new school year is about to begin (tomorrow's registration, with all the forms to fill out, the massive amounts of money about to be borrowed, the commitments to be made), I'm again nervous, but there's one difference: I'm not worried about whether I can do the work. All the stuff surrounding the law school experience still causes me to wake up shaking in the middle of the night, but the schoolwork? It's not a piece of cake; it's not a foregone conclusion; but I know what it will take to do well. The subjects, the professors, the distractions, all will be different from last year, but the framework will be the same. It's what they mean when they say the first year of law school is the hardest. And I don't hate it. That's something...it might even be everything.]

[(One woulda-coulda-shoulda: the stiff neck and shoulders are back with a vengeance; I woulda liked to have made it down to S.B. again before school started, as Max suggested. A day at Gaviota Beach coulda been a weekend-before-classes-begin tradition. I shoulda gone...)]

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