Dear Karman,

How goes it? Long time no speak. Are you still trying to save the world one child at a time? I have big news from the home front—hang on to your weightlifter’s belt—I am no longer a big city lawyer. I have moved to Houston, Texas and have been transformed from city slicker to cowboy hat toting Southerner. Let me give you a little background to explain this better.

As you remember, I wasn’t a huge fan of the law firm. I dreaded getting up in the morning and I began hoping the elevator would crash on my way up to my office every morning—sick, huh. After eight months of drudgery, however, I began to get used to the whole work thing. I realized that although I despised the firm, a large part of my hatred was directed toward the whole idea of working for the rest of my life. I realized that there were lots of jobs that I could be doing that would be much worse, such as lifting heavy boxes.

While I came to terms with working, I wasn’t ready to accept that I was destined to work at a big Firm. I started looking for an in-house position. I told the headhunters that called (about three or four a day when the market was good) that I was not interested in going to another firm, but I was interested in going looking for an in-house position. For the most part, the headhunters would laugh, wipe the tears from their laughter, and tell me I was way too junior to go in-house, or tell me of positions that had no future.

One headhunter did call and tell me of a job in Houston, Texas that sounded somewhat interesting (at that point, anything that wasn’t a law firm was interesting. He asked if he could show my resume to the Houston guy. Seeing as I wasn’t having luck elsewhere, I figured why not. A number of headhunters had tempted me with possible positions, only to have them never call me back. The headhunter continued to call every month to tell me that the Houston guy was still interested, but he was too busy to set anything up. I would pretend to still be interested, and wonder why the headhunter was even bothering. After four months, the headhunter again called to tell me of the Houston guy’s interest. I again feigned interest, but this time he said the Houston guy was interested in setting up a phone interview. We had the phone interview. The Houston guy then flew down from London (it appears that he wasn’t much of a Houston guy, but was instead based out of London) to have a dinner interview with me. I then went to Houston to have a full interview with the company. The rest is history. After a two-month vacation, I started work on Monday.

I’m currently in Denver on my first business trip for the company. Oh, the company is called Schlumberger; it’s an oil-services company. I work for the Schlumberger in one of its joint ventures known as WesternGeco. I’m an I.P. attorney for the Houston office of WesternGeco. It’s weird. I’m the only I.P. attorney in the office and they ask me questions and actually want to hear what I say. Quite different from law firm life.

So, when you think of me now, you should think of me living in Houston, pretending to fit in. I haven’t actually met anyone here yet, but I figure part of that is because I’ve only been here for a week. I did buy a car and rent a nice apartment. Now I just have to get used to being a Southerner. I think that’ll take some time.

I’m sorry for being such a stranger over the past year or so. When I was working at the Firm, I had no energy to write e-mails. The Firm just sucked all creative juices from me. I’m hoping this new job (which so far I really like) will change that.

Talk to you soon,

David