Exit Strategies

Been an interesting summer so far.  In retrospect, swinging straight from law school into the externship was probably not the best plan.  I could have used a little more time off to recuperate.  It would have made it somewhat more complicated to get the hours done that I need for my class credit, but I think it would have paid dividends in sanity.

I’ve been thinking a lot these last weeks about escaping.  The start of it is, one of the ways I cope with stress is by constructing plans to do something (often pretty absurd) to alleviate the situation causing the stress.  So, when finals got bad, I decided to become a community college professor.

Quick clarification: generally speaking, these plans are just escapist fantasies.

See, a guy from some association of community colleges stopped by the law school to talk about career prospects for teaching there with a law degree.  Turns out, a juris doctorate is sufficiently legitimate to put you on the doctorate pay scale at a community college teaching things like Business Law.  Then, over the weekend before exams, Jimmy Buffett played a concert in Kansas City.  I didn’t go, but they broadcast the audio over the internet, so I listened in while I was working on some things.  It got me thinking about how much I loved the Florida Keys when we were there last year.  Short version is, I spent my recreational time that evening looking at job listings for professorships at a community college on Key West.

Then this week, Frank Turner put out a new record, and there’s a new song on it called “I Am Disappeared.”  He’s written songs before about not being tied down to a place, being ready to leave at a moment’s notice, so the subject matter isn’t at all surprising, but it’s a good song.  The chorus goes like this:

“And on the worst days
When it feels like life weighs ten thousand tonnes
I sleep with my passport
One eye on the back door
So I can always run
I can get up, shower and in half an hour I’d be gone.”

(Frank is English, hence the odd spelling of “tons”)

I think it’s easy sometimes to paint yourself into a corner, to get yourself so far buried that you’re frozen where you are.  It’s also difficult sometimes to see alternatives, even when they do exist, because they’re easy to dismiss as “impractical.”  I think that’s why it’s a good idea to construct exit strategies.

Now, this isn’t an argument against commitment.  Some things are worth committing to unswervingly.  What this is is a suggestion that we practice at thinking through ideas thoroughly, that we develop the skill of finding ways to make worthwhile things happen even when they seem unreasonable or impractical, because sometimes those ideas can turn out to be the best of all possible worlds.

So don’t just think about running away to Europe.  Look up airfare.  Build a budget.  Think about places you can scrimp or increase earnings to make it happen.  Find a boat for sale that you can sail away in.  Find that beautiful wilderness in a far away place that you’d love to wander through.  Embrace the silly idea, even if just for a few minutes, because it will free you from the drudgery of your current existence.

Often, when I do this, I find at the end that my current reality is actually not so bad as I thought.  I carry my flight of fancy out to its practical implications and discover that it isn’t quite the paradise I had hoped for.  At that point, it’s much easier to throw myself back into things.

Sometimes, though, I find that the flight of fancy has real wings, and I can ride it to a place I would never have thought possible.

Paradise.

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