My Metal History Pt. 9: Post-Law School to the Present

Wow, I really did not mean to put this off so long. Let's finish this series, shall we?

I took the Bar Exam in summer of 2006 after graduating from law school. I passed it quite easily. The Bar Exam itself is not really that difficult. It's the months of preparation leading up to it that are the really stressful part. Honestly, I have no memory of actually taking the exam. It was just sort of anticlimactic.

After the Bar Exam, I reported to my first job in September. I was working at a small law office in St. Paul, Nebraska, a town of about 2,200 people. It was two hours away from my home town in Lincoln, so I knew no one. I was only the second attorney in the whole town. It was a bit of a culture shock going from a city of over 200,000 people to one of only 2,000. But part of the job offer was that the firm was going to pay my rent for my home. They wanted me to live in the town and become a member of the community. This of course freed up a ton of money for me.

Since I had so much money right away, I saved a lot and spent a lot on metal. I immersed myself a lot more into the music. I had no friends within an hour's drive and I had money, so I went out and got as much as possible. I sought out all of the landmark albums from each of the subgenres that I could get my hands on. I found websites and studied the history of the genre. It was then that I discovered the Encyclopedia Metallum. At one point they listed the all-time greatest albums in each subgenre and I went through and found a bunch of those. I learned the differences between all of the subgenres, something I was admittedly fuzzy on before. I had no social life, there was none to be had in St. Paul, a town with virtually no residents in my age range. Metal became my escape. I would come home to a completely empty house (other than my two cats) and turn on the stereo. It would not be turned off until I went to sleep at night.

I discovered all kinds of new and exciting music while I was living in St. Paul and I always was able to buy as much as I wanted at that time. I remember the first real trip to buy music was to Best Buy in Grand Island where I bought the new albums by Lamb of God, Blind Guardian, Iron Maiden, Cannibal Corpse, and the reissued Melissa by Mercyful Fate. From there, it became almost an addiction. I discovered online stores and placed several orders. I started listening to groups from every subgenre in metal. Groups as diverse as Darkthrone, Sonata Arctica, Overkill, Bolt Thrower, and many more became frequent additions to my collection. I discovered several scenes that I fell in love with: Australian war metal, Hellenic black metal, slam death metal, and Canadian thrash metal.

In summer of 2008, I began dating the woman who would eventually become my fiancee for the second time. My spending habits on music decreased to allow for time and money to be spent on her, but it was still definitely high, and in January of 2009, I started this blog. It was at this time that I was informed by my boss that I was no longer going to be employed there. Her reasoning was never really clear. So I began a job search and took a position in Norfolk, Nebraska. The downside was that I no longer had free rent and was not able to spend quite as much on music. It was disappointing, but by that point I was mostly caught up on the classics and looking for undiscovered gems.

I got engaged in fall of 2009 (September 14, yes honey I remember the date). Money began being put more towards the wedding, but I have still been able to pick up music that I really want. Last Fall, I became unemployed again. I will not go into the reasons here. My decision was to go out on my own, to stay in Norfolk, but to open my own office. It has now been just a few months since I really started getting things in gear, but things are going reasonably well. Hopefully business will continue to pick up and I will be back where I was financially in St. Paul. We'll see.