The FNC's Been Saved - Now What?

[Major changes are imminent on the job front, but somehow my duties will pretty much remain the same. I've been full-time at the Friendly Neighborhood Cabaret for a little over six months now. It was the most painless way to eke out a living in the wake of the major slough I went thru as part of the Events of 2004, and I've been grateful for it. I don't make squat, but I work with most of my best friends, and there are other compensations.]

[This balance was beginning to be untenable before the changes (nothing worth going into...structural alterations that have to result in a better-run venue) became official this week, and some small but key changes I will face here are making me kind of sad. I'd really been sticking around because there was this great opportunity thru the FNC elsewhere in the U.S., and I think I was the front-runner. That opportunity evaporated a while ago, and the current changes are making me realize once again that it's past time to bust something resembling a move.]

[I've never been that interested in having a "career." I have burning ambitions (well, smoldering), and some of them might even be classified as professional. Except for that nebulous term "writer," I've never longed for any job to be a major part of my identity. I went to law school because it sounded fascinating (it was) and I needed to finish a course of study for my own self-esteem. (I did; but it was about the only good thing to happen to me last year.) But I never yearned to be a lawyer, and I still don't.]

[No one told me going in that law school is essentially a really inefficient review course for one's state's Bar exam. It's not a specifically academic study of "the law"; that's what LLM programs are for. If New College hadn't had the progressive frills it had, and if I hadn't already committed to one year of student loan debt, I probably would have joined my classmates who dropped out the first year. I'm so glad I didn't.]

[But I can't defer those loan repayments much longer, and I'm certainly not making enough to start paying them back, not to mention other people (i.e., my parents) to whom I'm in massive, embarrassing, and scary debt. I decided not to take the Bar exam this July, but I've long since realized that, while I do have a J.D., I'm not a lawyer. That doesn't make me unemployable by any means, but it makes finding the right job much more difficult. Even if I knew what the right job looked like...]

[I can't stay where I am (but will for a while, since no one's offered to pay me for my looks or sexual prowess), but...now what?]

Previously Next