Blackout

Yesterday was my first day in chambers completely by myself. No judge, no administrative assistant, no intern. I felt like a kid home alone for the first time. And what happens? Of course the power goes out. FOR FOUR HOURS.

Yesterday once again reminded how absolutely dependent we are on electricity. I had flashbacks to last year, during the California fires and power outages, when I would be sitting in my apartment reading with a flashlight and eating cheerios because I could not warm anything up for dinner.

This time, I was sitting there on a Monday morning with no coffee (only 2 drops had made it out of the coffeepot by the time the power went out), with no light (thank goodness my office has windows), and no way to do work. While our computers may be old and the software may look like it comes from the 80s, we do do everything in the courthouse on computers thanks to electronic filing. It is great 98% of the time-- the other 2% being when you come in early to get work done, like I did yesterday, only to be completely denied. No writing orders, no reviewing briefs, no preparing cases. All because some little current could not make it to my computer.

So what does a girl do for four hours while she waits for the power to come back on?
- do all the filing that I have been putting off for weeks
- read correspondence from prisoners regarding their sentences
- walk down 5 stories because the escalators are broken, only to find out that the court coffeehouse does not have power either
- be jumpy when someone knocks on the door because I have been reading too many of those prison letters by myself in the dim and quiet chambers (it was just another judge)
- pace around the office so I do not fall asleep due to the lack of caffeine and the lack of light

In other words, I basically went crazy with nothing to do. I almost considered reading random caselaw from the books off my shelf, I was that bored. I could not even imagine how prison feels.

AWOL & Apolitical

As you can tell, my blogging has decreased substantially over the past few months and nonexistent this past week. Between mini-vacations, adjusting to my new job with long hours, and realizing the joys of post-work/weekend fun, I am usually too exhausted to write my daily blogs. I have actually started many blogs this week and then fell asleep mid-type.

Further, there is now so much I cannot write about. Cannot write about the details of the crazy cases we see at the courthouse, cannot write about politics , cannot write about "matters of public controversy" (welcome to the "impartial" judiciary). If you could not tell from the tags, that is a lot of my entries. Politics has been such a large part of my life since I started college. It is strange that I cannot be publicly political for a year-- I am just thankful I was not a law clerk last year during the election.

On the one hand, not being able to blog as much does make me sad. There has been so much I want to write about, and I like having a creative and informal writing outlet to balance with the formal and formulaic legal writing I do all day. It gives me time to reflect and simultaneously update friends and family. Yet, on the other hand, I having time to actually live a life and become exhausted from something other than studying.

I think I am going to try to still blog, just not daily. I mean, that is what most normal people do anyway.