Month of Gratitude, Day 9: Job collage

I am grateful for my patchwork collage of jobs.

My day job is as a sole-practitioner criminal defense attorney, challenging death penalty convictions in California state court.  I am like a public defender for death penalty appeals, but instead of working in an office with other people, I work on a contract basis, appointed and paid by the state of California.  Or, more precisely, by us tax-payers in the state of California.  Thank you all. I am sincerely grateful for this income.  (And to dispel any notions of lawyer pay you may have from jokes, movies, etc.  . . . over the ten years I have been working on death penalty cases, my hours and income have precisely mirrored that of a public school teacher.)  

I research, investigate, write and file "briefs" on behalf of my clients:

"Briefs" is in quotes because that's what they're called.  But they're not brief.  They're long.  Hundreds of pages.

Along with the opportunity this job provides me for income, I am also grateful for the people it has allowed me to meet over the years,  and for the intellectual and emotional and moral challenges it provides.  This job puts me through the wringer.  That makes one a more interesting, empathic person.  Hopefully.

But it also makes one need other patches in the collage of work days and nights.  

So, I write short stories and screenplays.  (No, you have not yet seen anything produced out in the world that I've written.)   I've been doing it for about five years.  I'm totally grateful for the writing piece in my job collage -- where characters speak to me and tell me what to write.  I consider it one of the luckiest things that happens in my life, and am profoundly grateful for it.

Finally, as you reading here know, I'm the owner/artist/marketer/bookkeeper/webmaster/secretary/fulfillment gal behind Bean Up The Nose Art.  Which is my very favorite patch in the quilting collage of my jobs.  This job is like being in kindergarten . . . playing with paper, scissors, glue and making new things . . . .

. . . learning all kinds of new skills . . . meeting new people . . . playing in the playground of grown-up life.  

I am grateful for all of my jobs.  It turns out that I am someone who cannot work on one single thing only.  (Which means I'm never going to be an expert in anything.)  Concentrating solely on one thing makes me cranky and terrible to be around.  (And I am not that easy to be around in the first place.)  The collage process works for me in art pieces, and in how I spend the job time of life.  I am profoundly grateful for finding this out, for having the pieces in this job collage, and for the chance I have to live life in this collage way.