And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
-Pink Floyd, Time
A gray, 15 degree morning out there. January in the Southern Tier. A broken record.
Yes, that's a young man behind the tree speeding down Pine Street on a bicycle. He's not even wearing a hat. I marvel.
Yesterday I logged back onto Facebook for the first time since the day after the election, solely to announce the formation of new firm. Once FB was back in my life, I soon found myself impulsively clicking on the app whenever I saw a red notification, which always meant a like or someone commenting on the post. Having been away for awhile, it's easier to see how this thing sucks you back in, so you can give away a few bytes about your life that will help Zuckerberg pay for the inauguration party Monday night.
Pondering this morning the utter joylessness of this time of life. Is it seasonal affective disorder? I sort of doubt it--I've always liked winter, liked the gloom. More time to read in front of the fire.
But time is the real problem here. Life is no fun because there's no leisure anymore, none at all. Even when I'm having an after work cocktail with Peg in front of the fire, I'm thinking about work, thinking about the farm, thinking of the kids I haven't communicated with in weeks. It's all just too much. The main goal of this move into solo practice was to find a way to slow down a little, and carve out of my professional life the things I despise. But it's looking like the result may be quite the opposite: until the number of cases starts to drop because of natural attrition--settlement, trial, a dispositive motion--the workload is just going to increase, and increase dramatically as I become my own associate, paralegal, and legal assistant.
Foremost on my mind these days, as has been the case for decades, is the parade of trials lined up between now and mid-year (and beyond, come to think of it). I am scheduled to pick a jury in eleven days, but we mediated the case yesterday and the other side's corporate rep simply failed to show up. This is a big no-no in court-ordered mediation, so last night I had the unpleasant task of drafting a motion to continue and for sanctions. We'll see how that goes. The case is going on five years old, making it less likely the trial will be continued, and the judge has signaled he's not available to hear anything until the Friday before jury selection, a week from tomorrow. He should continue the trial, but we'll likely be forced to go through the exercise of trial prep anyway.
And there's another trial the week after that, a one-day bench affair in Port St. Joe over a pre-construction condo purchase contract gone wrong. The lawyers on the other side are from Miami, and you have to watch your back with those guys, all the time.
Back in the old days I tried cases against folks I knew and mostly respected--I recall one occasion when we jousted in front of a jury for three days while sharing a babysitter. Those days are long gone now, as the insurance companies and lenders who dominate the civil court scene hire lawyers from down below who are capable of pretty much anything, assiduous practitioners of obfuscation, delay, and "gotcha" litigation tactics. Well, most of them anyway. It's just no fun anymore. I view every approaching trial date with a deep sense of dread, and they're lined up one behind the other. It's time to do something else.
I figure it'll take several years for this plan to play out. The first source of relief will come as the caseload drops, and I have fewer and fewer of these ominous blocks on my Outlook calendar labeled "TRIAL". It'll likely be 2028 before the last of those disappears. In the meantime, I'll market mediation more--several folks have told me I'll be back on their preferred mediator list now that I don't have the conflicts that come with being in a firm. I'll also lean harder into this LLM program at NYU; maybe take a couple extra units if, by the fall, I'm billing a little less.
In the end, I'll mediate a couple cases a week, advise clients outside of court while referring them to someone good if they need that kind of help, and try to live into a better life. Maybe even write a little. Who knows?
But we all live in the present, and my present ain't so hot. Today I have witness prep with a guy who keeps no-showing for his witness prep, an onboarding session with the virtual back office folks for the new firm, a call with an unhappy client getting jerked around by a pair of deadbeats in a routine foreclosure case that's spiraled out of control, another who just likes to call and complain that he's paying me anything when his cause is clearly just, another I signed up as Hurricane Helene was making landfall and then completely forgot about, and still another who alternates between pushing me to move her case and demanding that I slow down when she gets a bill. It's no wonder my days are filled with billable time and little productive work.
It makes one want to day drink, which I won't of course. That would be irresponsible. And my blood pressure is already back up in dangerous territory with all this change to manage.
At some point I also need to deal with the fact that we may have sold a cow that didn't actually belong to us. And there are decisions to make about parking at Wyldswood. And I don't have a clue about handling withholdings on my paycheck when it's just me in a couple weeks. And I just remembered I need to walk down the hill later this morning and sign the paperwork for this hive office I've located on Market Street.
And . . . and . . . and.
It's no way to live, but here we are.
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