And now I must confess
I could use some rest
I can't run at this pace very long
Yes it's quite insane
I think it hurts my brain
But it cleans me out, and then I can go on
-Jimmy Buffett
Up at five this morning, getting ready for a busy day. I'd include a photo of Wyldswood here, but it's pitch black outside so there's nothing to see.
I'm trying to remember why I decided to come over late yesterday after sitting in a Zoom deposition in the PC office. Promptly at nine this morning we will commence Day Two of depositions in a big Hurricane Michael construction debacle lawsuit now pending in federal court. I think the original plan was to continue depositions through midday Friday, which would explain deciding to sleep over here. But now the last two days have cancelled, and I'll likely head back to NY tonight to work remotely for a couple days and then spend Easter with P. I could just as easily have flown over to TLH from ECP, but I didn't.
So, that means getting in the air here at around seven for a fifteen minute flight over to TLH, parking the Columbia at Million Air and grabbing an Uber into town, suffering eight-to-ten hours of stagnant hypoxia sitting in a conference room trying to pay attention in a stultifying round of questioning ("Mr. Smith, I'm handing you now a copy of the A101 AIA Standard Agreement I've marked as Exhibit 45. I'd like for you to turn to page six, paragraph 4.1.3. I have a few questions about the performance bond.").
Ye gods. No wonder I zone out. After twenty-five years of this I can't even pretend to be interested.
Then I'll flag an Uber for another ride back out to the airport, looking out the window and worrying about weather. Maybe I'll flight plan a little using the app on my phone, hoping the winds allow for a one-hop to KELM instead of forcing a gas stop somewhere on the northern fringes of the Shenandoah Valley. Once through the door at Million Air I'll whip out my computer to file an IFR flight plan, perform my walk-around (don't rush--the things you miss might kill you at 15,000 feet), and take off to the north. If things go perfectly I'll be in the pattern up there around 9:30, a mere sixteen hours from now.
No wonder I feel exhausted, all the time.
And this week has presented in spades one of the new hazards of the Zoom era: constant, unreconcilable scheduling conflicts for multi-party meetings.
It goes like this. Someone wants to assemble the "team" for whatever we're doing to appear as a series of tiles on a computer screen, often with some fake sylvan background, to meander through a discussion of how to respond to some legal challenge. Back in the old days that entailed pulling out paper calendars, looking at where we'd be physically located that day, and trying to find a time we could all assemble in the conference room.
Those days are gone. Now the "organizer" simple shows up on your Outlook calendar to place a meeting block there with a Zoom or Microsoft Teams invitation. Failure to object has somehow become an acceptance of the "invitation". And the most insufferable among them will pepper your calendar with multiple blocks for the same meeting, just in case.
What happens next is what's happened this week. Yesterday poor Connor sat in a full day of witness preparation via Zoom because my co-counsel in another city had blocked the first three days this week on my calendar for the one-day event, and I had a Zoom deposition yesterday. Today at nine my Scandinavian client has blocked the same meeting that's appeared and vanished on my calendar three times now. This time they're not kidding, and have about six folks scheduled to appear, including yours truly. Unfortunately, it coincides with that rarest of events, today's in-person deposition in Tallahassee. I already had emails from the agitated Danes at 3 a.m. this morning, urging me to cancel everything else to accommodate their urgent need to see my mug on a screen, muted, listening and taking notes. Tomorrow we have an overflow Zoom mediation block for today's deposition, a Zoom hearing unilaterally set by the judge in a probate case for the same time, and would have had a deposition by Zoom in another case if opposing counsel hadn't thrown a temper tantrum yesterday and cancelled the event over difficulties in serving the witness with a subpoena. I'm sure it will magically pop back up on my calendar, without intervention from me, in the next few weeks.
This is simply unsustainable, and that would be true if I was in one place all the time. And this aerial sojourner schtick doesn't make it any easier. Yet, I don't have a clear idea of how to remedy the situation. Simply picking one of three conflicting events and blowing off the others doesn't seem polite or professional.
Maybe a disclaimer on Outlook: IF YOU DO NOT GET AN ACCEPTANCE OF THIS MEETING FROM ME, DON'T BE SURPRISED WHEN I DON'T SHOW UP. But what if the reader is a judge's assistant, or a client who brings a lot of work. Whom am I willing to insult a little by leaving them thinking their little woo woo isn't the most special woo woo in the world?
Eat the elephant one bite at a time, Donk. Send written comments to the client ahead of today's meeting, and have Connor cover and take notes. Come up with a polite way to let folks know they can't just splatter my calendar with appointment blocks to be on the safe side when what they really want is a single meeting. Create some function that makes the whole screen flash red and the computer emit a shrieking sound when a newly scheduled event creates a conflict.
Exercise. Eat right. Get eight hours of sleep. Forgo the second toddy at night. Carve out a little time for the spiritual life that was to have been a priority this now-lost Lent.
Yeah, right. So much wishful thinking. I just need to pick a date on the calendar to become Of Counsel or switch to mediating full time, or let God pick the day I have a MI at my desk or in the plane somewhere over West Virginia.
Time to respond to the needy Dane. Here we go.
Comments