Coping

Once, when I was in my early 20s and couldn't find a job despite my brand-name credentials (and language skills, and gold-plated internships, and ...okay, time to let it go), my father told me I was being too hard on myself. I'll never forget what he said, "You don't need to be doing the best at everything. You just need to survive. Because life is ups and downs, and you need to be able to get through the downs."

And while I don't consider studying for the bar to be a down per se (because failing the bar and then having to retake it would be an unqualified down), I find myself relying on some coping mechanisms nonetheless.

Junk music. Everyday there's a new mainstream, commercial, mass media song on continuous loop. Today, "Beautiful Girls" by Sean Kingston. Why a song about suicide is soothing to me, I don't know, but it is. It also reminds me of last summer, when the San Diego radio stations would play it on near-continuous loop. I hear the chubby Jamaican today and then I'm back in my rental car, driving home from the gym on Friars Rd. (And the weather was perfect, without a drop of humidity, because it was San Diego, but of course I was far away from the Captain...)

Running. Nothing gets me happier than a good work-out and sore quads. Truly.

Farmers' markets. I need to stop, actually. My fridge is overflowing with produce, and try as I might, not even I can eat that much. Because my freezer's starting to burst with frozen leftovers and yes, produce that I have frozen properly myself. (Go big or go home, I always say.)

Blogging. Because I'm just that narcissistic. Seriously, though, I appreciate everyone who reads (all five of you) and I ponder everyday how to make my blog better. Should I dedicate it fully to the bar? If I do, should I write about how I've tried to tackle specific problems, or should I keep to writing about how I tackle my feelings and fears? Or is a themed blog a bad idea to begin with? Should this just be a running diary?

Ah, narcissism. The idea that anybody even cares.

Time for bed.

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EDITED TO ADD:

Likening myself to a vacuum cleaner mogul. James Dyson has a commercial (for his $500 vacuum cleaners) about how his designers and engineers are delighted everytime they fail at something in the laboratory, because that's another thing they've learned. I like to feel the same way every time I do practice questions: just another 18 questions I'll never get wrong again.

Doing my hair in the exact same way everyday. Robert Schumann (or was it Schubert?) once wrote his mother he was so poor he couldn't afford a haircut. I am not that poor, but I am that pressed for time. And as you probably can tell, I find routine comforting. My hair-iform, if you will, has become a long French braid. There is one thing about it, though. Classy though they might look, braids always have signaled 'surrender' to me. As in, the wearer gave up on regular hair maintenance and just decided to braid it. Like me. Whatever.