young dumb and full of lyrium

I notice you love drawing and creating characters and writing and just being creative.

With you always constantly studying and working, do you ever feel as if there is no time to truly engage with your hobbies? What are your thoughts on a work/life balance? Do you ever feel as if you have abandoned your dreams or is studying law a primary goal and the creative hobbies are just more so for enjoyment?

Sorry for all the questions! I feel we have similarities. Part of the reason why I've been holding off on pursuing higher education and a true career path is because I myself am already exhausted with my current arrangement with just a dead end job and feel I never have time for my hobbies and things. I was hoping to hear your own experience!

Hey! These are really good questions, and I've definitely thought about this a lot.

I do feel like there hasn't been a lot of time for me to draw or write lately, and the Bar exam definitely sucked up a lot of the time I would spend on those things. However, I was able to balance law school with my creative hobbies (finished one of my long fics during law school). I've always had time to do things outside of my work/studying, but the main difference is that I've become much more limited in how I can allocate my free time. Instead of being able to write, draw, and play video games, I have enough free time to choose one. And after a day of trying to memorize the federal rules of civil procedure, I'm more likely to choose video games (so that's where I've been lol).

That's kind of my approach to work-life balance. I refuse to spend my entire life focusing on work. During law school, I would always stop studying by 6pm, 8 at the absolute latest. Same approach to the Bar. Clock in, do my assignments, do some extra review if I feel shaky, then make dinner and watch a movie. I try to view work-life balance in terms of actual priorities. If I have a major deadline on Monday and a client only got back to me on Saturday, yeah sure I'll be working on the weekend. But absent that, it's often not that deep.

I do feel bad sometimes that I haven't been able to write/draw as often, but I don't think I abandoned my dreams. Writing and drawing full-time hasn't been a dream of mine for a while, so it takes some of the pressure off. It's more like it's a form of relief that I haven't been able to experience in a while, but lately I've felt like drawing or writing takes way more energy than it would before. I know I just need to get back into my communities and find that energy again.

Day 1, night before the first exam session. I’m taking the exam outside of my city and there is nothing within walking distance. My hotel is basically an isolated fortress. So I decide, fuck it, I’m getting delivery. I choose Indian food, since I need something I enjoy to get through this.

I order chicken saag, and. There was no spice. I don’t mean it wasn’t spicy, I mean there was. No. Spice. I didn’t think that was even possible to accomplish with Indian food, even by accident. It all just tasted like butter, and not in a good way. I kept forgetting that I was eating it between bites.

Day 2. I just did my first bar exam session. There’s a thunderstorm and a tornado watch so I decide against ordering delivery (also ow my wallet). The hotel doesn’t have a restaurant, but the fridge out front has pre-made meals. I grab this chicken shawarma quinoa thing. I take it back to my room. Quick question: where’s the shawarma? Is she in the room with me? It was the driest thing I’ve ever tasted. The chicken tasted and felt like cold styrofoam. I added the leftover unseasoned Indian food to the dish to add some moisture. It becomes easier to eat after that.