a teeny bit about my job

I can't believe how much I love my job.

It's been a combination of luck and the force of my personality, to be honest.  Luck that the job opened up just when I gave up on teaching and started casting around for something new, and luck that the attorneys I was initially assigned to assist are all fantastic people to work for; then luck that I got to know people who are, or who became, people of influence in the firm.  The rest is personality and will.

Part of what I love about my job is finally working in a place that's big enough for my ambitions.  I've taken my initial position of "legal secretary" and added management and policy development, with an eye far up the ladder over time.  I am well respected in an environment that does not yield itself to a great deal of respect.  I am well respected because I do good work, I am friendly and outgoing, I am smart and competent, I am firm and decisive, I speak my mind, and I don't tolerate bullshit.  It's a role I've grown into, and quickly.  I've only been at the firm a year and half and I've already earned a promotion and started a policy-making focus group within my department.

It's weird, realizing that I'm good at politics.  (I've come a long, long way since my rawboned fledgling days at the homeless center all those years ago.)  I do politics my own way (that is to say, with sincerity and openness), but I know how to make and leverage connections, I know the right things to say, the right arguments to make.  I know how to set a goal and gather support for it.  I know how to get what I want.  I know how not to give a shit when people don't like me.  I know how to use all that for good.

It's pretty fucking great.

I could rave all day about how much I love my attorneys.  I assist three at present; there have been some secretarial reassignments since I came on board, so of the three I initially started with, I've retained two, S. and B. (one of which I kept because I went to my supervisors and demanded to keep him--sometimes when I think about all the brassy, ballsy things I've done at this job I just sit and giggle, I can't believe they've all worked, and also, since that appears to be all it takes to make shit happen, why haven't I thought to just make demands all along); the third (D.) I knew I wanted to assist from my first week on the job, and about six months ago he went to my supervisor and told her he wanted to be assigned to me, and it was done (M.'s recounting to me later made my heart swell with pride, because the people at the top know who I am).  My attorneys are all vastly different personalities, with vastly different positions in the firm hierarchy, and I get along with all of them splendidly, and have really solid working relationships with them.  B. and I are work-spouses who are mostly incredibly nice to each other, occasionally grump each other out, and frequently spend long minutes on the phone together muttering absently to ourselves before realizing we don't need to be talking to each other.  S. and I are old-school-style boss-and-secretary (except that he thinks me a magical computer wizard), with a lot of benevolent cordiality and occasional political commiserations.  D. and I are still figuring each other out, but there's a lot of mutual liking and respect there, and working with him is teaching me to be even more assertive and personally powerful, which I appreciate the hell out of.

And that's not even bringing the management and policy-making aspects into it.

I fucking love my job.  For the first time ever.  I've turned it into a career, and I have a clear vision of where I want to take it.  And I can get there.

The last eight years have seen a few distinctive shifts in my personal development.  2009-2010 saw me burst out of a chrysalis of trauma and depression into healing and coping and joy and freedom.  2017 has been the year of real blooming.  (So I'm a butterfly and a flower.  A butterflower.  Don't mind me, I have a cold right now and this is the Sudafed talking.)  It's been a damn hard year, in places -- completely exhausting.  But this is the most, and most marked and permanent-feeling, growth that I've undergone in a long time.

I've always learned and grown in my own time.  Often that's been later than I would have expected, or than others have expected.  But it's better and deeper for taking so long.

I still have a long way to go, with a lot of things.  But I'm getting there; and even better, I love where I am right now -- not just where I plan to be.

Also?  I love writing again.