I may be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but that gift horse is zapping my mojo

My current job situation is seemingly ideal. I've been working for the same special education boutique law firm in Atlanta for 9 years. I love BossMan and he loves me. He respects my skills and my adoration of legal writing and appellate oral argument, and he lets me do it without making me do to much of the stuff I hate, like trials with unpredictable witnesses who give me stomachaches. BossMan is a smart, generous, sweet guy who has always been wonderful to me and whom I adore working with.

When Jason and I decided to try to move to Hawaii, being able to keep my job was essential because it let us move here with an income stream. And BossMan generously agreed to let me continue to work for him, essentially telecommuting to Atlanta from the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Working from home has not been without its challenges -- I miss having somewhere to go (other than to drop Zeke off at daycare) when I get up in the morning, and I miss the camaraderie of the office. Being at home all day with nobody to talk to can be lonely. But the flexibility is also nice. If I need to run an errand, I can run it. If I feel like going for a surf in the middle of the day, I can do it. Basically, as long as I get the work done in time, I can do it whenever I want, at my convenience. Not a bad arrangement.

"So what's the problem?" you ask.

Well, the problem is that since January, when I came back from maternity leave, I have had a hell of a time getting back into the loop. Many of the cases I was working on before Zeke was born are finished, meaning that in order to have work to do, I'm reliant on BossMan and the other lawyers in the office to include me on the newer cases. And they haven't been great about doing that. It's not personal, and I'm not mad. They're not trying to freeze me out. But for all of his strengths as a lawyer, BossMan is a terrible administrator, and he has a hard time focusing on people that aren't right in front of his face. So the lawyers in the office get overloaded with work, while I'm sitting out here at my desk with nothing to do. At any other firm, my dismal billable hours from the last two months would have gotten me unceremoniously fired, and rightly so.

A number of people have said to me, "Why is that bad? After all, you're still getting paid, right? Milk it! Enjoy the downtime!"

I can't. I like being busy, and I feel like an asshole when I'm not pulling my weight by maintaining my portion of the workload or, more fundamentally, justifying my salary. Because right now, BossMan is paying me alot of money to do nothing, and it makes me feel terribly guilty. Plus, it's boring. I've got mad lawyering skillz, and I like to use them.

And that combination of feeling like a dead weight to the law firm, and being bored out of my mind, is just bringing me down generally. I'm losing my motivation to stay active or organized in the rest of my life. The more I have to do, the more I tend to have my shit together in all facets of my life, and the converse is true as well.

Yesterday BossMan and I had a great conversation in which we agreed that he would try to delegate more work my way, but that I would also put feelers out into the job market to see what's out there. I asked him if it was time to call "time of death" on our arrangement and go our separate ways, and he said that the thought of it made him sick to his stomach and that he wasn't prepared to cut ties just yet. But realistically, he acknowledged that it wasn't a bad idea to at least see what the job market here is like. Maybe we'll be able to work out an arrangement where I can do something local on a part-time basis but still work for him on a contract basis.

I've sent out a bunch of cover letters and resumes and done some networking through some of the contacts I've made through the law school. I'm energized by having a plan of attack -- it just feels so much better knowing that I'm doing something productive. It would have been easy to just keep going the way I was going -- BossMan would never fire me -- but I can't do it and hold my head up.