Insomnia

"A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow."

-Charlotte Bronte

Cold and windy out there this morning at sunup.

Appropriately gloomy after a night spent tossing and turning from one to 4:51, then asleep for almost exactly an hour.

What's that all about?

I realized I never received a renewal notice on insurance for the 1960 Willys, and should have by now. With irons in the fire at work, at the farm, up in NY now, and of course all the quotidian daily stuff we all must manage, I'm finding that I need some sort of virtual assistant to help keep track of it all. Maybe some sort of AI solution is out there. It sure would beat tossing and turning and sending emails to myself at 3 a.m. reminding me to follow up on the stuff keeping me up.

At work, seventy-odd files are in the back of my mind all the time. I figured adding an experienced lawyer would help, but it's been an uneven experience so far. I don't like hands-on supervising and the newbie doesn't always take criticism well, which is a recipe for trouble. Add to that the fact that after two years my legal assistant still sends me documents with typos and nonsense sentences. If it were your office you'd be right there with me staring at the ceiling in the darkness most nights.

Maybe there's an AI solution to those things, as well. I know for a rather extravagant price Lexis and Westlaw are offering virtual legal work, doing research and drafting memos and motions. That's not what I need, however. I just need a robot that will stay after deadlines and turn my rough draft dictation into a letter or a motion, maybe making a suggestion or two along the way. Why can't I find that sort of virtual help?

In a larger sense, I'm starting to become sort of a curmudgeon when it comes to working with other people at all. At the gathering on our balcony to watch the boat parade on Saturday, a conversation ensued about how much these folks enjoyed getting back to the office simply for the pleasure of talking with other people. I commented, with Jameson's induced candor, that I could go days at a time without talking to anyone and be perfectly at ease with life. I used to love feeling the canopy thunk down on the rail and sitting in that solitary space surrounded by the Eagle's instruments and displays, just me and this $31 million killing machine. I still love taking off alone to fly back to P, and spending four hours at altitude with myself, unable to take a call or respnd to a text.

But litigation these days is a team exercise-cases are way too big to handle alone, what with massive digital discovery files and flurries of motions and a regular hurdler's track of deadlines. So I've been thinking it's time to go back to school and get that LLM in tax, and shift to advising clients on tax and estate matters. That can be pretty lonely work, and I've seen guys my age naturally transition from the courtroom to managing their clients' deal structures and late middle age personal fortunes. I just don't want to make that transition without the very best training as a foundation for giving advice on a topic about which I know just enough to be dangerous; I've seen some real hamburgers over the years hold themselves out as estate planning lawyers, and I've come too far to become that guy now.

So in this sixtieth year, maybe I'll start work on adding a degree. It'll keep my brain from turning to mush.

That all was on my mind last night. But the last straw was the Slim Whitman of the feline world, Slane, who began his nocturnal yodeling promptly at 2:15.

This time I decided I wasn't going to try to just ignore him, and judging from the jostling on the other side of the bed P wasn't sleeping much either, a much bigger deal for her with a 6:30 work start.

So I dashed around the condo au naturel, trying not to flash anything reproductive in front of our expansive windows as Slane led me on a spirited chase that ended with him cornered back in the home office. I had to drag him out from behind the desk by his tail, and he rewarded me with a line of gashes on my forearm as he tried to hang on while I was tossing him into the laundry room.

The yodeling continued even then, but died down finally until about 5:30.

I solve this cat passive resistance issue today when I drive them with me to the farm. I need to get our trailer registered for the John Deere, pick up title paperwork on the new old boat that was sent certified a couple weeks back, and handle a hearing in Perry for a friend tomorrow before flying back here in the Columbia in time for a dinner party. The cats will stay at Wyldswood, with the two of us returning for the weekend after work on Friday.

Now off to a second day of watching expert witnesses spray hoses at leaky windows in a construction defect case. A hell of a way to make a living.