February Edition

I hop on a swing to try and kick the sun. As I pump my legs to ascend, the wind gently combs my hair with the sweet and rusty scent of nostalgia and metal chains. It is on the way down that my weight against the seat insists on reminding me that I have long outgrown the playground. My heels skid across the rubber mulch below. I’m swinging back and up again and the thought flies off. Just one pendulum-swing away, I think to myself as the silhouette of my white sneakers finally manages to eclipse the sun. Then, one of the metal chains snaps. 

My alarm clock rings, and my morning cup of coffee helps to wash most of the dream down. Even so, flashes of Icarus and his wax wings swoop through my mind as I get ready for my new January routine: homeschooling in the mornings, building out a legal operations and compliance function in the afternoons, and tutoring in the evenings. 

I have found myself infatuated with the pairing of education and law: the crayons and the client calls, the movement breaks and the breakout rooms, the show and tells and the workflow automation demos, each day culminating in a golden ratio of chaos and order. The breadth offers me variety, but restricts my ability to make an enduring impact and contributes to my already loosely defined professional narrative. In addition, it is harder to reliably keep commitments to other interests, like engagements with off-tech events and my local Toastmasters chapter.

This juncture is also represented in the medical school journey. Following clinical rotations, the model after which my career explorations are loosely based, there comes a point when a medical student must select a field to specialize in for residency. Prior to these past few months, the fear of never gathering enough information to make an informed decision had been a source of dread for me. I’ve recently come to realize that these career rotations serve the same purpose as my dreams: data for distillation. 

If the last couple of months have been wide open experimentation, it may only be natural that the next few be dedicated to exploring the possibility that Daedalus, not Icarus, was right. 

Warmly,

Judy