Editor’s Note: While this is Natalie Posgate’s last P.S. column, P.S. will continue. Starting next week, Mark Curriden will serve as The Lawbook’s interim pro bono, public service and diversity reporter.
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Who: Natalie Posgate
What: Leaving The Texas Lawbook
When: Friday
Where: to Reese Marketos
Why?
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Why. A three-letter word that packs so much substance. A word I’ve used repeatedly in my career in interviews. A word I use silently, all the time, every day. Almost like a prayer. Why is this person like this? Why have we spent centuries in war over religion when we all may end up in eternal oblivion? Why is everyone wearing bucket hats? Why am I always thinking to avoid feeling?
For three letters, why may be the most complex word in the English language. (Whereas, somehow, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious isn’t.)
In this situation, “why” is hard to answer fully, adequately. Not because I don’t know why. Not because I’m questioning my decision.
But because, for once in my life, it’s a question I’m not trying to ask.
I’m letting my heart and body lead the way.
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I’ve always been a self-reflector, but when I turned 30 at the end of 2019, it became an all-consuming obsession. Suddenly, it felt like life or death for me to understand myself better. To verbalize the inner chaos I was feeling that kept getting in the way of my inner peace, my routine, my responsibilities and my dreams.
I started therapy, and analyzing myself to ascertain my life’s purpose became, well, my new life’s purpose. I began journaling every morning. I began listening to podcasts about personality types, self-help, mental health and creativity. I took an online personal essay writing class, and because I overshared to a virtual room of strangers, some of those strangers became good friends who helped me go even deeper in this journey of self-exploration. I began working with an enneagram coach, who helped me see more clearly what I was repressing.
And something important I learned throughout this journey is that I was craving a change.
So when Joel Reese called me one Thursday afternoon in May 2023 — ironically, as I was driving home from therapy — and told me Reese Marketos was looking for a marketing person and wondered if I would be interested, something interesting happened. I knew immediately it was an opportunity I wanted to pursue. The people, the culture, the intrigue of what I’d be doing there made it a no-brainer, but that instant clarity was still a remarkable experience for me, considering just a couple years earlier, I’d more than once drained half a day’s worth of mental energy stuck in decision fatigue, spending 20 minutes deciding which pair of leggings to walk my dog in since the pair I was mentally prepared to wear turned out to be dirty.
Of course, this immediate knowing did not mean it wouldn’t be a complicated decision. The Lawbook has been my home for 12 years, and for good reason. I already had an amazing job, and I had just started an exciting new beat focusing on pro bono, public service and diversity in the legal profession, work that deeply matters to me. A job that I could, for the most part, do from anywhere, years before “remote work” became a thing. A job that gave me the freedom and flexibility to take a story where it needed to go, even if it took extra time and words. A job with the one and only Mark Curriden and my other hit-the-lottery mentors and colleagues who have become family and have made me an infinitely better person for knowing. A job that gave me my husband and the beautiful life we have built together. A job that introduced me to countless people I consider friends. A job that built my confidence, power and identity. A job that allowed me to indulge in high-level people watching. A job that paid me well to talk to interesting people and tell their stories. A job that any journalist would kill to have. I was making a difference with my words, and what more could a writer want?
But something I don’t want is to stay confined to one identity and risk losing out on other identities that I’m curious about or that aren’t even on my radar yet. I told my new bosses in the job interview that I want to be a renaissance woman, someone who builds expertise in many areas, and they fully supported that.
In the personal essay class, one of my classmates said something that stayed with me when she introduced herself. She listed all of her identities: a wife, a mother, a writer, a painter.
“I am many things, and I am also nothing,” she wrote.
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I had more I wanted to accomplish at The Lawbook, so I waited a year before I seriously entertained leaving, a luxury that I realize most do not have in the recruitment process. In that year, I wrote 97 more stories. I learned tons at more conferences and seminars. I built more relationships. But no matter how much I did, I never felt like I had accomplished enough, worked hard enough or given back enough to a place that has given so much to me. I’m well aware that I’m a perfectionist, but I am often unaware when I’m chasing perfection.
Sometimes we spend all of our energy trying to fix ourselves when we are not what needs to be fixed.
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“What if?” is another question I’m trying not to ask as much because there’s not a resolution unless you find out for yourself. And I knew without a doubt that if I didn’t say yes to this opportunity, I’d continue asking, “What if?”
So here’s to finding out.