A real summer and a really big goal

As of next week, it will have been a full year since I endured the satanic ritual all law school graduates must succumb to if they have any hope of actually practicing law after graduating with three years worth of law school debt.*  One full year!  Sometimes I find myself referring to "last summer" and catching myself because I'm actually referencing the summer of 2009; not the summer of 2010.  The summer of 2010 was a blur, and not really a summer, in the proper sense, at all.
Was it hot?  Yes.
Was there sunshine in the fields and meadows? Yes.
Was there sunshine in my heart?  No.  No there was not. Terror did a pretty bang-up job of keeping the  mnemonics in and the sunshine out.  May, June, and July of 2010 might have technically happened, but they were not my months; they belonged to Barbri and the New York Board of Law Examiners, joint tenants of my soul (and terrible renters, I might add).

Since that dark period, I moved out of Philly, moved down to DC, became a morning runner, went back up to Philly to run a half marathon, broke my ankle, recovered from said broken ankle, and learned that if you ever get divorced you should really try everything possible to avoid litigating that mess (note: I did not get divorced.  I did, however, work--and still work--for a judge who handles many divorce trials. And they are not pretty. A painful divorce is one of those things that I believe must be worse than the bar exam... so there's some perspective for you future-bar-takers, I suppose.)

And now, now, I'm training for a marathon.  My first.  My first time running anything more than 13.1 miles.  I'm nervous that my body won't hold up, that four months is a long time for nothing to go wrong, that once I start my job as an associate in October I won't find time for my long weekday runs, that training will take over my life, and that at mile 25.5 I might collapse on the streets of Philadelphia (la-la-la  la-la-la  la).
But I'm also really freaking excited. And I'm excited to write about it all here.  And at the end of the day, I feel like if I can get through studying for the bar exam, I can run 26.2 miles... right?

Right.


* Except if you went to law school in Wisconsin and plan on staying there. You jerks.