Job Satisfaction

My associate mentor in the corporate department once told me that when her hours drop, so does her job satisfaction. I found this hard to believe since I'd only been working for a week and my biggest fear was being too busy to retain control over my free time. I also thought that getting paid to hang out in my office without much to do sounded like a pretty good gig. And yet I billed 50 hours in the first four days of last week and have never been happier at work. I love what I'm doing. I attended a deposition, helped draft a Motion to Dismiss, and did lots of other substantive, law-filled things. Monday was a long day as I traveled to Houston and back for the depo, but the other three days I still left for dinner and spent my happy Landon time at home in the evening, logging back in after he went to bed. I also received a lot of positive feedback from the partner and senior associates I'm working with and that also goes Very long way in boosting job satisfaction. It was a good week back.

And to celebrate my productivity-filled four days, I left at lunch on Friday to pile my family of five into the car and head to my parent's lake house for a mini vacation. The drive to Houston was horrendous- the usual three hours turned into a five-hour traffic filled marathon of wrecks, closed lanes, and a highly irritated toddler. When we finally arrived my parents watched Landon while JP and I went out for dinner, margaritas, and a movie. We saw Harry Potter, which was good, but after just re-reading the series and spending all my non-billable work time on the Harry Potter wiki page, I have to say I was disappointed. It's not the writers' or directors' fault, you just can't cram that big of a book into a 2.5 hour movie, but I couldn't stop thinking about all the layers and details and characters that were left out and made the story so much better! JP liked it a lot and it was still very nice to get out and flirt without a romance-killing two-year-old at the table. (Though a little odd to be in the same theatre where I went on my first date in middle school and most of my dates in high school; there were lots of pre-marriage memories that kept making me laugh while sitting next to my husband of four years.)

Now we're up at the lake. The dogs are running about with my parent's two labs, Landon is napping after spending an hour racing back and forth across the property in 100 degree heat, and JP and I are lounging on the couches admiring the view. Due to some impending hearings and other deadlines, August is going to be very busy at work. But July has been a nice balance of business and pleasure and I feel ready for it. I'm so happy in litigation and like the people I work with so much, it's hard for me to believe I spent five months in M&A. I feel so much more knowledgeable about this practice and I love being able to craft arguments and delve into the complexities of corporate and securities law from a legal and persuasive standpoint. I also love long court-imposed schedules that allow for some measure of planning and vacations. I know my job satisfaction will go up and down throughout my career, and there will be times when it plummets down to the "I should have gone to med school" level, but right now I couldn't be happier.