Work-wise, I'm dealing with some uncertainty (I'm a federal employee, and Trump seems hellbent on Making-America-Greating me out of a job). This wouldn't be a big deal if I had marketable skills, which I don't. People aren't exactly lining up to hire still another lawyer whose experience consists almost entirely of government benefit programs. Needless to say, morale is not at its peak in my office. In more positive news, we had a kung fu seminar last weekend, which was awesome. About 20 hours of training over the course of Friday-Sunday. I learned a lot, and there's something about intensive workouts that really gets this stuff under your skin. I really can't wait for the day when I can ditch this law thing altogether and start teaching full time. That's still a ways off, unfortunately, so I'm just trying to cope with things in the meantime. On the short-term, we're taking an easy night of it. My wife's watching some rom-com or another, while I'm here typing at you lovely folks and deciding what game is next on the agenda. The youngin' is off with grandma for the evening, and they'll both be over tomorrow morning. Grandma will help in the kitchen (where I'm not allowed), while I get drunk on the sofa. Politics lately has made me aware of how little I actually care about the large-scale and abstract. Part of figuring out how I deal with life in the short-term is going to be looking for ways to affect my immediate surroundings for the better. It's easy to become distracted by wonkery, but the end result is a heartlessness that is unhealthy. Studying Greek and the Bible is helping some; most of Christ's teaching seems to be "stop worrying about rules and just be decent."
Wait and see man. He has never had a consistent ideology so no one knows what will happen. The market for attorneys in the States has been absolutely crap since 2008. I was in a bad position in 2001 when the dot com bubble burst. Was lucky that I was able to milk it when I could. At times I wish that I would have been happy being a small town general practitioner relying on real estate, wills, family and criminal but I would have hated it. So I have had to roll with the punches along the way as well.
Yeah, it's more the uncertainty that's wearing on me right now. At the least, though, his stated plan of a hiring freeze means I'm unlikely to get promoted, y'know, ever (at least unless and until there's a new administration). But you're right that it remains to be seen, and it's more resulting in giving very few fucks. More generally, that sums it up pretty well. I tried the small town thing, but hated it as you say. The truth is I dislike about 99% of legal practice, so at this point my job is a means to an end, namely a way to pay the bills until things align so that I can do what I actually want to do.
What is it you really want to do, if you don't mind me asking?