Kind of like playing "House" but not really.

Sometimes I feel like I am just playing at being an attorney.

I am feeling that way today. Right now, as a matter of fact.

I really hope that I am not alone in this feeling. Play-acting grown-uppery, that is.

Forgive me for my exercise in affixation, but I do not know how else to describe it. "Grown-uppery." "Adultitude."

It is kind of like playing "House" but not really.

Now, I have to be careful and differentiate here: I do not mean "House" as in "House, M.D."--I am not talking about "playing Doctor" or something like that. {Aside: Ewww. I cannot even imagine the images that "playing Lawyer" would conjure. I am shuddering just saying the words.}

It's a feeling that you are just a small child sitting at your father's desk. You can almost imagine that your feet are not touching the floor and you can feel the desk edge pressing into your upper chest--you can almost rest your chin on the desk. It's a feeling that you are signing random pieces of paper instead of important letters and documents.

It's a feeling that you could pick up the phone and spend time giggling with one of your friends about how you are sitting at daddy's desk and he is letting you play "office" and touch all of his work stuff.

It's a feeling that you should be doing something constructive, like linking all of your paperclips into one long chain and then feeding them back into your magnetized paperclip holder. You know the drill: it's the office version of unscrewing the salt shaker lid.

It's a feeling that you are playing dress-up and walking into court to babble made-up words into the microphone, making things up as you go along. Oh wait, that one really is what lawyering is all about.

It's a feeling that you are so far out of your depth that someone, somewhere, will surely notice that you haven't the vaguest idea of what you are doing.

It's a feeling that someone, sometime soon, is going to come busting through your office door, point at you, and screech like Donald Sutherland. It can be a very surreal feeling, much as if you were a pod person, a different intelligence--a naive intelligence--looking out of another person's eyes, an adult's eyes. You are someone different, just going through the motions and hoping that someone--a co-worker or a boss does not pierce your masquerade and see through your harlequin mask. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE," they would squeal.

That's how I feel today.

I wonder if my colleagues ever feel that way.

Heck, I wonder if my LW ever feels that way.

I can almost feel the phone book on which I am metaphorically sitting even as we speak.

I am struggling to decide what causes this feeling. Is it, as I fear, a coping mechanism? a way to handle an inordinant amount of stress? Or is it a self-esteem issue? Or, even worse, is it true that I genuinely do not know what I am doing?

On that note, I think I will have to lock the door and hide in my fort under my desk.

Watch for the boss, won't you?