This Is Not The End
I am 32 years old. Older to be starting my 1L year of law school, but it’s not unheard of. I see age as an asset. I’ve learned lessons, faced challenges, seen highs and lows.
It took 31 years to choose this path and earn my place on it; 32 to get to the starting line. I’ve tried my hand at a few things but like to argue, help, and write. Legal writing is unique, but a lawyer told me: If you can write that’s half the battle.
Advice I continually come across is to look after yourself in law school. “Control the controllables,” Cherelle Iman says; “be at peace with the rest.” She advocates self-care, but not our consumerist understanding:
the antidote to burnout cannot be a trip to the nail salon. If it were as simple as changing one’s nail color or buying the hottest gadget (i.e. retail therapy), I doubt that the World Health Organization would recognize burnout as a significant issue.
For me, self-care means
Sleep.
I don’t sleep well. Melatonin helps but I try to sleep without it.
Actually eat.
If I “don’t have time to eat,” I caffeinate. Healthy meals are worth making time for, caffeine is a band-aid and a vice. I often more than double the FDA’s daily recommendation—about three cups of coffee—probably contributing to poor sleep. If I rest, eat well, and hydrate, I won’t need to lean on caffeine.
Move.
Don’t put on a lifting belt and squat for two hours, but sprinkle in some lifting if time allows. I could try running again but my mental health likes resistance training. When all else fails I’ll go for a walk.
Therapy.
Universities offer mental health resources. I’ve utilized them at those I’ve been to and will continue to do so.
Fish.
I’m not under any illusion that I’ll have spare time to fish, but it’s good for you. “The Surprising Mental Health Benefits of Fishing,” published by the National Alliance on Mental Illness and written by “a professional fisherman of over two decades,” explains fishing as “the opportunity to clear my lungs and practice breathing exercises.” Learning new skills increases self-worth, “progress can be empowering.”
Fly fishing is not a new skill to me. I had it and it went away. Despite devoting a decade to it, after brain injury my gross and fine motor deficits made it challenging to cast, tie flies, tie knots with tippet. There was little connection between my brain and right side. It’s still weak, my axons were sheared. Axons connect your brain to your arms, hands, and the rest of your body. They send electric impulses to muscles. I do unilateral exercises to rebuild the connection and choose to use my right hand when my left is available. My right side has gotten better but still isn’t as it should be.
I understood this from Origin Outfitters:
95% of this guide’s clients “know what they should be doing” when it comes to casting, “but…[there’s] a disconnect between what their arm is doing and what their brain is telling it to do.” He has them “work on connecting [the] brain to that hand.”
When showing a new angler how to cast—accelerate to a firm stop, let the loop unfurl—I casted to demonstrate. I felt like myself with a fly rod for the first time in years. Next time I fished, that feeling was gone. It’s not going to come rushing back. Fishing is an exercise in humility and patience. The National Alliance on Mental Illness’s article calls it “a metaphor for overcoming your emotional struggles—there will be good days and bad ones, but success lies in pushing forward.” I don’t know what fishing’s place in my life will be these years, but it will have one.
Birds.
A podcast I listened to said: “Life does not stop for law school, but law school also doesn’t stop for life.” My love of birds won’t die in law school, but law school also won’t keep it alive. I’ll have to make an effort. I’m a ten minute drive from good trails; seven from Grasshopper Sparrows (Ammodramus savannarum); ten from habitat managed for butterflies. On a recent walk, birds sang.
In grad school, birds helped—hawks at Tompkins Square Park with a sandwich from Sunny & Annie’s. Birds will intersect with new pillars in my life, as they did with Sunny & Annie’s.
Moving this direction induces self-doubt. Law school is famously difficult; the Socratic Method, scary. Challenges don’t end at graduation—the Bar Exam, an actual legal career.
Cherelle Iman’s book reminded me:
You are meant to be exactly where you are, despite the imposter sensations you may experience. It’s only a sensation because you are not a fraud—you can uniquely impact any classroom, courtroom, or conference room you enter.
I’ve done things that’ve prepared me, that make me me.
Preaching omit needless words, showing students which words were needless, which weren’t, and why. Watching needless words decrease.
Translating ideas into research, interviews, and writing. Learning that to understand something, ask—even if it feels like a dumb question.
Bringing myself up to speed with topics others had written articles or book chapters about to gain workable fluency with which to edit.
Moving to a city I didn’t like for grad school, leaving once finished, working, unrelated to that degree, seasonally outside with my body—reading Anna Karenina, feeling resonance with Levin.1
Not to mention challenges I’ve faced since 2022’s diffuse axonal traumatic brain injury, which continues to present challenges. Last week I had a follow-up with the doctor who told me everything can be trained. In February he said I should drum. To show I had been, I tapped rudiments and “When The Levee Breaks.”
I told him I lift weights, do unilateral work, and have been timing how long I can stand on my affected leg (thanks,
). He didn’t suggest I add anything.Injured or not, if something is hard, do it. Keep doing it, it’ll get easier.
I remain stubbornly optimistic and refuse to believe I won’t keep recovering. It’ll take more years even though we’re already past three. Good things take time, patience, effort, and optimism.
There’ve also been non-medical challenges since 2022. Life changes to deal with as I tried to feel like a person again. They took their toll on my confidence and self-esteem, but hindsight is 20/20. I’m thankful it all happened. We have the option to view difficulty as a gift.
I wrote in A Blank Slate that my TBI awoke “rage” in me, not angry “but undoubtedly rage.” I think of “rage” in Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” a verb: “rage against the dying of the light.”
To be honest, my rage started as anger. It never took much to piss me off, something I’ve been working on since my TBI. My rage hasn’t been anger for a long time. Anger is often unproductive. My rage isn’t directed at anybody, but feels like a fuck you. Fuck you requires a you; my you is abstract. More fuck this, what became of my life, but fuck this connotes quitting. Papa always said: A quitter never wins, a winner never quits.
When I was hospitalized and could speak again, I would say: This is not the end. I understand that differently now. Recovery might never end. This is not the end because there isn’t one. You could view that negatively, I view it as an opportunity to keep getting better. Even after I’ve recovered to a satisfactory degree (not yet), neuroplasticity is lifelong. It’ll help me get to my old baseline, then where else I want to go. Improvement never stops:
new neural connections can be created and strengthened. This process of adaptive rewiring within the brain can allow survivors to partially or even fully recover lost functions.
There’s nobody to prove wrong, but like Papa I want to prove something wrong. For better or worse I like to have an enemy, an adversary. I give my TBI a face—my enemy.
I was born April 1993, but consider myself born again April 2023. It doesn’t matter how old you are; if it’s time to start fresh, start fresh.
I’m where I’m supposed to be, when I’m supposed to be here. This is not the end.
Levin’s “most serene moment in the book” is working outside, mowing.
I love that you are doing this for yourself.
I went into graduate school for my MA in Clinical Psych when I was 40. And I enjoyed almost 33 years of practicing in that field. I’ve loved it.
You’ve got this James.
Love that last photo of you. You look so dapper!
I'm excited about this new journey. Law school is tough. You're tougher. Maybe you'll have less time for birding for a couple of years, but the birds will be there for you when you need them.