Really, this is one of those boring parts of life where nothing is new. My wife and I are getting along, the Jewish holidays are here, and I'm working hard and being very aware of my sins and my transgressions, hoping G-d overlooks them and somehow finds the divine mercy to overlook them. If I were him though, I wouldn't. So here goes another f'cked up year.
I wrote the Lubavicher Rebbe a long P"N (pidyon nefesh, or pouring out of the soul) right before Rosh Hashanna. My Rabbi, mashpia, and friend told me always to be careful what you write, and to describe your sorrows and your sins, and not to list the unnecessary details, because writing a letter to the Rebbe is not confession. It's approaching a tzaddik (now nifter, or no longer confined to a body on this Earth just as my beloved Grandmother is no longer alive either) with respect, with humility, and as one of his Chassidim, asking for his blessings for a good year. Can you imagine if someone walked over to the Rebbe and said, "Rebbe, I had lascivious thoughts which I couldn't control and I killed my neighbor's dog." Well, I don't think he would reply with a smile in the least bit. Anyway, that was the kind of Pidyon Nefesh I wrote. It was immodest, brazen, and I shouldn't have sent it.
So what have I accomplished this year? What have I gone through? Well, in Rosh Hashanna 5769 (September, 2008), G-d decreed that I continue to work hard to save up a number of months worth of salary and get laid off from my job so that my wife and I can move our family to New York to be near her family. We spent most of our savings on moving expenses and living without a salary. This past Rosh Hashanna 5770 (last September, 2009), G-d decreed that we live in poverty, albeit with large injections of cash literally days each time we were about to run out almost as if we needed to learn to trust that it is G-d who provides our income and our livelihood, not our own hard work. Literally days before we could no longer pay rent or afford to buy food, Hashem rescued us. The first one paid very well, but only lasted from October until December. We were incomeless and during that time, I took the Barbri Bar Review in preparation for the Feb. 2010 NY bar exam which I passed. After the exam, from February until June, Hashem helped us survive by allowing me to win an unemploymnet dispute where I was awarded close to $7,000 in back pay. Then in June, I got the document review position I am currently working at (which pays bubkis), but it pays the bills. I started my own law firm, but have had only one client in a few months because I had to turn away all other clients because taking them would have required me to leave my stable document review position. I am cool with doing this, but I see parnossa (earning a livelihood) as a monkey does, swinging from one tree vine to the next. It ABSOLUTELY MAKES NO SENSE to jump to the next vine if one is not there. In other words, my mashpia and close friends have told me not to leave what I have unless I have something equally as good or better to move onto. Here, it would be stupid to quit my document review project (and get blackballed from working with them again) and take one case which will pay a few hundred dollars not knowing if there is a case after that one.
So now we're in the year 5761, and I wonder what G-d has in store. I thought this year was a pretty shitty year until I just wrote it out for you and it seems as if I did quite well. However, I must point out that most of the year, we were LITERALLY not making ends meet. Most of the year was going from one miracle to the next, just to survive. I acknowledge that.
What I would like is to have this year be a stable year where I get a few good paying clients who keep me happily busy working in my own patent firm, and while I'm working on those clients, I would work my butt off also searching for new business, and so on. I've also been spending each day learning about foreclosure, bankruptcy, and my pet area of law, patent litigation. If I can get enough clients to give me the comfort that I would get through the year unscathed, I would leave the document review project in a moments notice and would attend minyan every day and would do whatever I can to succeed. I just need that comfort in knowing that something would be there as soon as I left the project. Right now I have no clients and so it would be scary and very stupid to jump before I had something tangible to rely on in leaving the project.
My soul calls out to G-d and says, "I want to believe in you! Please help me start my law firm and get clients quickly so that I can properly service them full time and support my family with ease!"
Okay, this has been fun. I need to get back to the reading I promised myself I would do before I went home for the evening.
G'mar chasima tova.
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