step one: we admittted we were powerless

i've been meaning to launch this blog for months and could never find the right opening line. first, i wanted to do it because all the cool kids at my law school were doing it. then, i wanted to do it because there's just no blog out there for sober law students. then i wanted to do it because of ego--because, i'm a smart kid, goddamnit, and people should read what i have to say.

who knows if my motives are correct. i guess this is a blog for all the sober law students out there, whether you're in hiding or not (i am--kinda). and for all my 12-steppin' party people out there who don't hear enough smart-people gripin' at your AA meetings. and for all the dunderheads at CU Law who are just dying to read yet another blawg. this is for you... (oh yeah, and mainly for me)...

today we'll start with a common theme: procrastination. because if necessity is the mother of all invention, procrastination is the father of all blawgs. today i'm (not) working on my seminar paper, and as usual i'm in knots of anxiety. every time i have to write a paper in law school, i consider dropping out. then, about halfway through the paper, i reconsider my incredible genius and imagine special ceremonies being given in my honor for completion of this great work. then, as i'm sweating through a half-finished paper half an hour before deadline, i'm ready to take another medical leave of absence.

step one says "we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable." the alcohol part, for me, was easy. about a week before i got sober, i was trying to compute my mileage on a cross-country trip and spent the entire length of Kansas trying to remember what 9x6 was. i was a summer away from starting law school and was too wet brained to handle basic math. a few days later i woke up naked in an unusual place after drinking at bars and finishing a liter of cognac at home by myself. i was still drunk when i showed up to meet my new boss the following afternoon. i could no longer control how much booze i put in my system, no matter *what* i had cooking the following day ... or the following fall.

so, in a way, law school (or the spectre of law school) helped get me sober. and, almost two years later, it helps keep me crazy. because while i can admit i'm powerless over all sorts of things (alcohol first, then cigarettes, then caffiene, and chocolate...) i won't face up to my law school problem. the fact that i try to control how much i study, or how late to start on a project and still make it "perfect." the fact that i freak out at precisely the wrong time, or let fear sabotage a promising career. admittedly, law school hasn't led me to nakedness in unusual places, but it has spawned panic attacks, bouts of depression and out-of-the-blue fights with l.i.t. boyfriend. clearly, i'm powerless over law school, and my life becomes unmanageable.

so, what can i do? well, the program says i need to pray, ask something bigger than me to take it over. then i have to do the next right thing, which prolly means asking my professor for more time. or asking that librarian the difference between a "stat." and a "pub.law." accepting that this entire process is bigger than me, and my thrashes of intellectual angst ain't gonna make a lick of difference. and that's humbling. we alcoholics don't like that. neither do we law students.

so i've got to get down on my knees, here in the library bathroom, and be reminded of my humility. cuz the world don't turn on this paper. and getting an ulcer won't help me help others. god didn't get me sober three months before law school for me to try to blow it ... again.