Reply #74: I Wound Up

[RobinA]

with a similar existential situation. Although I was not anywhere near the WTC on 9/11 (I was vacationing in Montana), I am from the east coast, I had worked as a paralegal for large firms and corps for 14 years at that point, had done work at large NY law firms. I was laid-off in 1/01 and spent the summer of 2001 doing paralegal temp work on a large bank merger with several people from Morgan Stanley who were based in the WTC.

At the end of the summer I was fed up with years of shuffling boxes of paper for self-important fat cats conducting meaningless mega-deals and had decided to go back to social work. As of 9/11 I had actually secured my new social work job, but I was wondering if I was some kind of a nut, taking a huge cut in pay and giving up a cushy office to traipse though crack houses trying to get impossible people to be minimally OK parents.

The minute I saw all that paper come fluttering out of the WTC - paper that I knew about, paper the likes of which I had spent years playing with, poring over, filing, copying and redacting, I no longer questioned my decision. Know WAY was I ever going out in a flurry of paper drifting out of a cloudless sky. I may now get gunned down in a drive-by, but at least it will be because I was trying to make a difference to somebody.