Wanted: Mental Gymnastics

I had a heartburn moment recently. While perusing the local newspaper during a rare spell of quiet time (both kids were napping), I caught mention of a former co-worker and law school classmate at my old firm. The blurb pertained to a high-profile client of the firm. In standard defense attorney form, my former co-worker simply issued a “no comment” regarding the news story.

I had no clue my firm represented this particular client, and certainly had no idea that my former classmate was involved with the client, and it was one of those eye-opening moments that reminded me just how far from my professional life I am. I honestly think I felt a dull pain in my chest.

I’ve had a rough past few days with my kids, partly because I am in desperate need of a vacation from them (we’re closing in on three years since I’ve had a single, child-free day), and partly because they have been acting out because we’ve been trapped in the house as a result of the lousy winter weather. I’ve been very impatient with them and have been spending part of each of my day ignoring them (yes, I admit it) in order to read news online in an effort to feed my brain with something more substantive than Google searches on how to get my toddler to poop on the potty.

Yesterday I actually hid upstairs with my computer for 20 minutes or so while Ginger was downstairs with Fred, yelling up to me, “Mommy, what you doing?” over and over and over. I thought I was going to lose my mind and nearly put on some headphones until I contemplated the possibility of the kids burning the house down without me having a clue as to what was going on downstairs.

There was a time when I was conversant in nearly anything going on in the world. I spent my spare time reading Business Week, The Economist, and The Atlantic, among many other news publications, and was always up to date on the current state of many areas of the law and politics, out of necessity for my job. By comparison, I now read Parenting, Parent and Child, Wondertime, and a zillion other parenting magazines. As I get closer to the three-year anniversary of my leaving the workforce, I find myself craving that intellectual stimulation and missing the excuse to be up-to-date on, well, everything.

Unfortunately, even when I manage to find a few spare moments, I find that my brain can’t settle enough to absorb what I am reading. I am permanently stuck in fast forward because I am accustomed to having to do anything and everything at high speed in order to complete it before the next interruption from my children. As a result, I can read an entire news article and come away from it with almost no information because my brain was in four different places while reading the article. At this point, I’ve nearly elevated this brain malfunction to an art form.

I miss needing to use my brain for things unrelated to the kids or the house. It sounds wonderful to someone working their tail off every day at a job they hate – a couple of my unmarried attorney friends say they are jealous that I don’t have to worry about a caseload, billable hours, office politics, and every other crappy aspect of being an attorney – but being in a brain coma comes at a price.

I’ll grant my friends the billable hours (the two dirtiest words in the legal profession) and office politics: I don’t miss those at all. But a caseload, and all that goes along with managing that caseload, is something I miss. It’s not the work itself; after a few drinks, most attorneys will readily admit that practicing law is miserable on many levels. But the responsibility, the client interaction, the need to be sharp, the ability to focus, and the mental gymnastics required to conjure the best strategies in cases… those I miss.

Alas, for now it’s back to potty training and “how on earth do I entertain and simultaneously educate the kids today?”