Panic in BookThree: Flight Log 2016

Hello Anxiety. You bitch.

I’m having what can only be described as a legitimate genuine panic attack.

My heart is racing and breaking.
I feel like vomiting.
I want to scream at the top of my lungs “NO!” until I’m passed out from lack of oxygen.

The building I am in is completely empty. Completely and entirely. I could shout for help at the top of my lungs and not disturb a soul.

I have things that need to be done. Like… in order to do my job, I’m fairly certain I need to do these two things. BUT I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO DO THOSE TWO THINGS NO IDEA AT ALL!
And instead of being able to ask someone… I can’t. The best I could do would be to travel 30 minutes to a woman who was “too busy to correct her own mistakes” and ask her to help teach me shit that she should have been teaching me this whole time.

I’m now to that part of the panic attack where I can’t swallow and I just want to cry. A long, hard, desperate cry.
I worked hard to get through law school.
I worked hard to pass the bar examination.
It took two years for me to get hired anywhere to be an attorney.
And now that I am an attorney… I don’t know how to do anything. Every time I think, “okay… I think I can do this stack of work” then I look at the other piles of work and realize “I’m fucked.”

And… the panic increases. There aren’t any attorneys I can go to for help on these cases due to privilege. There is no help here for me. And I scour the Job Sites desperately looking for something… anything. And there is nothing to be found. There are no more job leads. No more escape hatches.

And I try to power through the panic. I try.
I think to myself “If you survive another 2 months; there will be a new County Attorney. Maybe they can teach you!” But then I think… two months is a lot of time to fuck up everything I’m trying to work on. Not to mention… there is no guarantee that the fucking Board will even hire a new County Attorney. There are still many government officials who think the Board will just tell me to do all the extra work. I certainly can’t do that. Then I think, “But, since the Board is getting over involved anyway; maybe they will force us to hire the candidate that is unqualified but cheap. Then there will be two people here who have no fucking clue. Or, maybe the Board will get their heads out of their asses and actually hire a competent person but then move my job to Part Time as they threatened to do. And in every iteration where I would be working for an unqualified individual or working part time or working the ENTIRE department; I’ll have no choice but to resign which in many ways would be good but then we’d still not have a job for me and I’d go back to looking for work full time which is shitty because there aren’t any jobs to apply to!!”

I WANT to know what I’m doing.
I WANT to do this job well.
I WANT to diminish my case load somewhat.
And this fucking nightmare place takes all of that, laughs and spits.

I’m trying to serve the people. I’m trying to provide a service… lawyer isn’t usually a job where you expect or are happy making below six figures… especially not this much below. But I do it because I like to feel like I can be of service.
But I can’t be. I can’t serve anyone if I don’t know what I’m doing.

And I don’t shy away from the fact that this is testing my faith. Or at least testing my patience. Where is God? Is he with the starving and dying? Is she in Aleppo protecting the children? Are they with the American People in selecting a leader? Or has God taken this year off?