Recommit

Hello!

It’s been a while. I’m sorry. I missed you.

Since I quit practicing law three years ago, my work life has been a patchwork. I edit, I coach, I do too many things for low or no pay. On days when I get several uninterrupted hours to write, I feel great about my life choices. On other days, I wonder why I gave up health insurance to not write.

Six months ago, I took on a temporary gig as a Session Editor for the Texas House Research Organization. From January through mid-March I had almost nothing to do. It was nice leaving the house. I enjoyed having colleagues and a space to write besides the three-bedroom house that I share with my husband, two teenagers, a dog and a cat. After the Texas Legislature hit its mid-session bill filing deadline on March 14, my job kicked into high gear. There were late nights, early mornings, and long working weekends. It was like shoveling coal: every couple of days a pile of 50-100 bills needed to be analyzed and edited, and the humans assigned to do this task did one at a time until they were all done.

With a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old in the house, this spring was also bat mitzvah season and driver’s license season and Maycember. I haven’t seen some of my best friends in months. I’m just now reentering social life. Everyone I’ve seen in the last week comments on how long my hair has grown.

On one of the nights that I escaped the office this spring, I saw the new Mission Impossible movie. Ever since Sine Die, which is a Latin phrase for the last day of session that I recently learned my husband pronounces “Sign and Die,” I keep thinking about that incredibly long scene of Tom Cruise underwater. I’ve been in a submarine at the bottom of an ocean of bills for three months. I think I might have the bends. Where are Haley Atwell’s clingy tank top boobs to nurse me back to health?

Another reason you haven’t heard from me lately is less about time and more about capacity. I started my job on January 6. My time in Texas government coincided with the first six months of Trump II. It’s not that I haven’t kept reading and writing and thinking about everything that I read in a ...