Monday morning I got into the office early. I’m not a morning person, but I’ve discovered that it’s best to come in early.

By heading in early you can beat peak hour, you save 30 minutes right there. My charge out rate is over $200 per hour, so in a sense I’m saving over a hundred dollars by getting in early.

Well, it’s not like I see any of the money that the firm bills clients. The partners are the ones who are making all of the money.

I hope they appreciate my efforts in waking up early…

All of the junior lawyers get into the office early. This makes it extremely hard to stand out. You have to be exceptional just to be run of the mill.

Waking up early also avoids the panicked feeling that starts to build when peak hour buses start arriving at the bus stop already full. I can’t afford to be late. I can’t afford to make a bad impression.

Nine times out of ten the partners don’t call on you first thing in the morning. Of course, that means that ten percent chance that they will.

Standing at the bus stop, running late, clock ticking by. I just know that today will be the day that the partner needs me to do an urgent piece of work that was supposed to go out to the client yesterday afternoon.

In short, it’s best to get in early.

But I digress…

So, Monday morning I got into the office early. I logged into outlook first thing to check whether I had been sent any urgent instructions from my supervising partner over night.

Luckily, I hadn’t. But I did have one email.

An email had been sent around to all of the lawyers in our firm at 11pm the night before (Sunday night). I read the email, "Human Resources have organised a lunch time professional development session for this Friday entitled ‘Stress Less: an introduction to meditation’. The session is limited to 30 participants."

Perfect, this is exactly what I need. I hurriedly clicked the button to register for the session. Ah, I could just feel the anticipatory positive relaxing vibes washing over me. This is exactly what I need.

A moment after clicking the button, a pop-up box comes up on my screen. "We regret to inform you that the PD session that you have tried to register for is full. Please send us an email if you would like to be placed on a reserve list."

Stunned surprise! I can feel my anxiety levels starting to rise.