What If I Just Let It Go

I have been thinking about quitting.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way that requires an announcement or a press release. Just quietly. The way you put something down when your arms are tired and you are not sure you ever wanted to carry it in the first place.

The California Bar was never just about passing an exam. It was about proving something. That a lawyer from Nigeria could walk into the hardest bar exam in the United States and come out the other side. That geography is not destiny. That the world is as open for someone like me as it is for anyone else.

But the world, it turns out, has opinions about that.

I think about the money sometimes. Not with bitterness, though there is some of that too. I think about it the way you think about a decision you cannot unmake. The registration fee. The review course. The shipping costs. The visa fee. The months of studying. The house I am not building because I redirected those funds into a dream that a consular officer dismissed in what I imagine was less than five minutes.

I think about what I would do with that time and money if I had it back. I think about the other jurisdictions. The UK. Canada. The Cayman Islands. Places that do not require me to beg for permission to show up and take a test.

And then I think: what if I just let California go? What if I stop chasing something that keeps moving away from me? What if I build something here, in the jurisdiction I already have, and stop measuring my worth against a benchmark set by a country that does not particularly want me there?

I do not have an answer yet. I am just asking the question out loud, because I think some of you are asking it too. About your own California. About the thing you have been chasing that keeps costing you more than it gives back.

What if you just let it go?

I am not saying you should. I am not saying I will. I am just saying the question is worth sitting with.