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Cold As Ice

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December 21, 2005

When I was a but a little shoe, I had a friend who rode horses. For some reason, a lesson he told me stuck with me. To this day, I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I remember it from time to time. He told me that when you're riding a horse at a gallop, you can't just make it stop; you have to slow it to a walk and then bring the horse-rider combination to rest. If you don't--he said--you end up making the horse's stomach tie up all in knots and kill it. When I first heard the story, I wondered if that was something that could happen to humans. I doubted it, but I wondered anyway. And we all know the benefits of cooling down. But this is what is frustrating me, personally, about the transit strike. I won't get into the politics of it, because I make a very healthy wage, and I recognize that sometimes drastic measures are needed to call attention to issues. I also won't get into the fact that I would really have preferred that the workers went on strike in the springtime, where I didn't freeze myself on the 25 block walk to work. I also recognize I've got it pretty good on that front. This week, I've been coming to work with nothing to do and leaving without having done anything. It may be letting the cat out of the bag a bit to say that the majority of my clients are investment managers running hedge funds, and that many of them were required to file their registrations with the SEC last week. This means that the majority of my work suddenly was completed, and my superior from whom I get all of that work has gone on a (well-deserved) little vacation. At the same time, I've had a project with a very senior member of my firm who doesn't seem to be very concerned with making forward progress. In reality, I know it's that he's worried about the forward progress of far more lucrative and time-sensitive clients, but the fact is that my emails don't get returned and my voicemail take at least 3 days to provoke a response. Which is why it's a true delight to call him and check in (what a bizarre situation that one of the most-junior people in the firm is calling one of the most senior to ask him to pay some attention) only to find out that he has gone on vacation for the week without telling me. Result: no work on that project for Shoe. Which brings me back to being the horse--I was busy, I was very busy, and then suddenly, I have literally nothing to do. I spent 18 minutes yesterday doing client-related work. Yet I had to walk to work, and I had to walk home. And when you are forced to dress up nice-like, trek in eye-watering cold to a job at which you need to be, but have nothing to do after having raced all year…well, that's just a recipe for getting your insides all twisted up.

This was Law and New York and Politics and Serious , and it appeared on December 21, 2005 11:16 AM.

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Posted by: Torrie at December 21, 2005 12:43 PM

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