15-07.30.124 in Book Two: The Fifteenth Year of the Third Millennium of the Common Era

Today, I received an e-mail from my Law School saying that they had heard of a job I’d be interested in. I raced to check it out and yeah the title and location looked perfect! Des Moines City Attorney. Heck yeah.

But the details were less thrilling:
Performs professional legal work related to economic development programs, real estate development, planning and zoning, building code, municipal infrastructure and utilities and other municipal law matters with high attention to detail.
Drafts and reviews complex real estate development agreements, economic development loan agreements and related security documents, and handles all legal aspects of real estate transactions.
Drafts and reviews contracts and regulatory documents related to planning and zoning, building code, housing, municipal infrastructure and utilities, and Federal grant programs.

So… it is a contract real estate attorney. Not my cup of tea and really no joy for me BUT… I want a job and Des Moines is my old stomping grounds so… oh, wait… minimum of two to five years of business, transactional or municipal law experience required. Crap.

That started me on a bit of a thought process that offered interesting memories. Myself, many of my friends, and many colleagues are all presently wondering WHAT AM I TO DO? I specifically said today, while I was chatting at/with God, “Noah got a direct line, Moses got a burning bush, and Mary had a host of Angels… what happened? Did your trans-dimensional cell phone plan change? How about some direct communication on what you want us to do?”

All of this gets me thinking about things… and since I’m thinking… I’m going to share!

When I was six, the school had us do a writing/drawing project. We were supposed to make a little book answering certain questions so that “when you are older you can look back and see what you thought about things.” I remember mine very well and likely still have it around here somewhere. We were supposed to make the pages out of our favorite color of construction paper… so mine was filled with yellow and gold pages. One page in particular stays with me. The question was What do you want to be when you grow up? On the page were two specific drawings. One was a roughly drawn proscenium stage with a little figure in the center. The other was a character in a full brown suit with a briefcase. The words that I wrote to answer were “Actor or Lawior”… what? I was six! Clearly what I meant was “lawyer” lol.

Fast forward many years. I had done stage acting, a feature film, some voice over work… I even got into college on a partial acting scholarship. But I wasn’t getting any parts in the Dramatic Theater department… these parts were cast by Drama Professors and Drama Students. All of the parts I was getting were through the Communications Theater department which were cast by Communications Professors and Journalism Students. And I tried to figure out what was going on… what was the message I was sending or receiving that kept this trend happening?! The answer came to me when I attended a Drama Department Party put on by the students. It was a house party. It was a theme party. The theme was “Bride and Groom” and… honestly… the party horrified me. It was a house crammed to the brim with people (every room was packed past capacity) and they were all openly mocking marriage. The conversations weren’t much better. Every conversation was about mocking anything that approached morality or conservatism or patriotism. I mean… I know it was 2004 and that a lot of people were fighting against everything Conservative… but this was an entire house crammed with people who could not, would not consider that there were people with other views that weren’t some Yosemite Sam caricature. And it dawned on me. I wasn’t cast in any Drama Department plays because… I was a non-smoking, non-drinking virgin… and my “fellow students and professors” in Drama believed that I “wasn’t right for the department.” So I left. And there ended the pursuit of an acting career.

After that, I tried business. I come from a long line of sales professionals, I figured why not. I got a D+ in “Introduction to Business”. Yeah. No.
So, I fell backwards onto my religion degree. I enjoyed the classes, I liked the teachers, there were a lot of interesting options. It was a degree. But… my Dad has secretly (and then NOT so secretly) always wanted me to be a pastor. He thinks that having a pastor in the family would be somehow the Ultimate Repentance… that if he was the father of a pastor then he wouldn’t worry if he was good enough for heaven anymore. But… pastor wouldn’t fit me. Not the way the world currently is. I can talk to people about faith and the bible… I can write about it… but being a pastor requires you to be under attack constantly… to deal with people who have no interest in hearing you, only going through the motions. Largely, the biggest reason why I said no to being a pastor? I view the world as a pretty awful place… I’ve had friends raped a number of times; I had a friend who has had 4 abortions; I’ve lost friends to cancer, suicide, drug overdoses..... largely, I said no to being a pastor because I couldn’t be the guy at the pulpit preaching hope. I’d be the guy at the pulpit telling people to get their shit straight or fucking quit. And… that is bad.

While I was getting my religion degree, it dawned on me that the elements I liked most of my education were textual analysis, interpretation, debate… really getting into it with other scholars on what something means, how it was applicable when it was written and how or if it is applicable to the modern world. And it became obvious… the things I liked the most about the Study of Religion coupled with my long history in acting… the law made a lot of sense. A lot of sense. And it became more and more obvious that I wanted to be a lawyer. And not just a lawyer… a lawyer that worked towards justice protecting victims. Those friends that were raped? Their rapists were never brought to justice. Shit, the woman that assaulted me has never been tried for any of her crimes (against me or others). So, I committed myself to becoming a lawyer that helped victims, that got them justice, that tried to fix the wounds in some of the world.

And that is what has brought me here. Sitting here hoping for a job to be given to me… or if that job doesn’t go to me, then to have something else come up that lets me follow my dreams. Or at least have someone or something help me find my path and get going.