My clothing was all laid out on my bed and I was trying to figure out how I would fit it all into my luggage. I wondered if I had budgeted enough money. Would I be able to navigate the cities, find a decent place to stay, meet some people, see all the “must sees?” But more importantly, would I get some clarity about the next phase of my life? What would the future hold?
2025? No. 1984.
I had what I thought was a life plan: I was going to travel around the world with two friends, then, when I returned, I would wait for an opportunity to join the Foreign Service and go to work for the State Department. I had studied political economy in college, and being named Secretary of State someday was how I defined success. I had taken the Foreign Service examination – comprised of both a written and oral component – and was poised to let the FBI have at my personal life to consider my fitness for government service.
When I graduated from college, I was fluent in Chinese, so I naturally assumed that if I made it into the Foreign Service, I would likely get posted somewhere in Asia.* At that point, I had not traveled in Asia at all, so I figured it would probably be a good idea to see what that part of the world was like. Although I didn’t think there would likely be anything the FBI would uncover, I still had a bit of discomfort about the background check as well.
My parents were never really enthusiastic about me going into government service, so they “suggested,” i.e., dictated, that I take the LSAT and apply to law school. After all, I was told, “you can do anything you want with a law degree.” I had absolutely no interest in being a lawyer, but, as usual, I dutifully followed my parents’ direction. I only applied to one law school because the application fees seemed like a waste of money to me. I got in, but filed that admission letter in my desk drawer and didn’t think much about it.
My trip in 1984 gave me plenty of time to consider my future. Ronald Reagan was President, there was no assurance that I would receive a Foreign Service post anytime soon, and the starting salary was $17,000. The combination of those considerations convinced me not to pursue a government job. Instead, I would go to law school because I remembered, “you can do anything you want with a law degree.”
Within the first month of law school, I was convinced I had made the worst mistake of my life. I didn’t know what a plaintiff or a defendant was, but, even more, I didn’t care. At all. I had never felt so lost. I had no viable plan. What was I going to do?
I decided I would commit to finish the first year of law school. If, at the end of that year, I felt like I could see a future as a lawyer, I would stick it out.
Sometimes in life, you reach an inflection point and someone appears to set you on a path. Marvin Jacob was that person for me. I worked with Marvin as a summer associate after my first year of law school. He was a bankruptcy lawyer, an Orthodox Jew, very smart and had a very dry sense of humor. Watching Marvin practice law, I decided that, if I was going to be a lawyer, I’d be a lawyer like him.**
At that point, law school went from uninteresting to irrelevant for me. Instead, I spent the last two years of law school clerking for different law firms in their bankruptcy departments. I rarely went to class, usually only attending to take the final exam which, thankfully, was open book.***
My decision to forego a job in the Foreign Service set me on a path that finally ended in 2025. Forty years of a default choice.
Fast forward to 2026. Once again, I find myself at an inflection point. Sadly, no new Marvin Jacob has appeared to serve as my personal Yoda. My parents are gone. I’m on my own.
This time around, I refuse to allow my future to be dictated by default. I want to find a new definition for myself that is truly reflective of the “inner me.” What does it take to become comfortable with your self-definition? How often can you change it? Does anyone really care who you think you are?
I suppose that’s really the central issue – can I be comfortable with a self-definition regardless of whether that definition is accepted by others? In that regard, I’d like to learn from a friend who is an artist. She self-identified as an artist, even when she was working as a bookkeeper or managing a talent office. In her heart, she was an artist who worked to pay her bills, and she never wavered in the confidence she felt about who she was.
Ultimately, her commitment to her self-definition paid off. She made some new paintings that garnered a lot of attention and were critically well-received. Her works now hang in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Would the result have been the same if she had identified as a bookkeeper who painted? Or was the outcome dictated by the energy she put into pursuing her dream even though there were compromises that had to be made along the way?
It’s with some trepidation that I am prepared to adopt a new self-definition. A definition that is not dictated by default or lack of direction. I’m a writer. I’m a writer that worked as a lawyer for forty years. I’m a writer who is plagued by imposter syndrome and a deadly fear of writer’s block. I’m a writer even though my path has been filled with twists and turns.
Does this mean my search for direction is over? Not even remotely. One thing I can be sure of is that I can put all my old identities in a box that I can revisit if and when I want, but I don’t need to allow them to dictate my choices now. I still feel like a fraud when now someone asks me what I do for a living. But maybe if I say that I’m a writer enough times, it will start to feel true.
I’ll keep you posted.
*The government often has other ideas for you when you join the Foreign Service. When I was considering going into the State Department, I met an alum who had graduated from college speaking fluent French. His dream of being posted to Paris was crushed when he actually began his service. The government decided that they had enough French speakers and needed him to become fluent in Arabic. They put him in a barracks where he went through 12 weeks of intensive Arabic lessons and then got posted to Addis Ababa.
**Years later, I would work with Marvin’s son, Shalom Jacob, who, like his father, became a bankruptcy lawyer. Our paths crossed several times, and I asked Shalom to let his father know that he was the reason I was a bankruptcy lawyer. I hope he did so.
***I probably should have spent some time studying things like constitutional law. During one oral argument, I made a comment about Lincoln freeing the slaves but couldn’t cite the proper constitutional amendment for that proposition. So, yeah, there were some downsides to focusing all my energy on being a bankruptcy lawyer.
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