Wednesday Discernment

"Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words. Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions. Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits. Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character. Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny"

Traditional Chinese, often attributed to Lao Tzu

Getting used to this view up at the Schoolhouse.

There are certainly worse places to spend one's workday. The photo doesn't quite capture the moment, with the ridgeline shrouded in early morning clouds.

This morning I find myself pondering on how my burned out disdain for the work that's brought us all this prosperity is starting to manifest into my reality. The clients who've incessantly robbed me of what little serenity I can muster are starting to fall away--I'll be filing a motion to withdraw this morning in a case that's ruined more family and leisure moments than I can count. I recall one conversation over the holiday between Christmas and New Year's that required me to pull into a school parking lot near Ithaca with Peg and my sister in the car, so I could spend a half-hour dealing with a "crisis" over the amount of a bond. That relationship is now at an end.

Another motion to withdraw is set for hearing on Monday, in a case representing someone who's been coming to me for years with legal work but has lately quit taking that expensive advice, or paying for it.

I find myself saying at least once a week, "I don't want to do this anymore." The sentiment forms the ether in which my conscience is suspended, is always there. The aural notification of another email arriving on my phone creates a knot in my stomach. I spend every predawn awake and worrying about this deadline or that upcoming trial, always feeling one step behind. It's really no way to live, and I've been here for going on 29 years as a lawyer.

But lately is different---at forty, I had a long career ahead, kids to get through school, and a sense of abundant time. Now it's just Peg and me, and any day the music could end with a stroke or a bad final approach into the woods or any of the myriad other ways friends seem to be dying off lately.

This morning in the NYT they ran a profile of an author I've long enjoyed. He commented that but for the decision after undergrad to become a professional writer, by this time in his life he'd be a "burned out attorney, well into middle age." He's 53. That was a long time ago for me.

So as I've bathed in this toxic disdain for what my profession requires, and for the part of the world in which I provide those services, it seems the Divine has taken my constant puling as a sort of pathetic prayer, and started to answer it. The phone isn't ringing off the hook. There's still plenty to do, but nowhere near where I was two years ago, when I had over a hundred cases in suit. God believed me when I said I didn't want to do this anymore, and it's all starting to efface.

Of course, this is going to require a little heretofore unpracticed thrift as the income stream that accompanied all that misery, mine and my clients', slows down. Properties need to be turned into something a little more liquid. The plane can just sport that chipped paint until we're ready to sell it.

Case in point: I just got a text that today they're installing a second air conditioning unit in the newly-enclosed bar section of the party barn. That'll be $6,000.00 or so. Every few days it's another big ticket expense like that. Yesterday I got the bill for the annual on the Columbia--$7,400.00, a bargain compared to last year's $22,000.00 debacle, but still a big lick.

As if by act of nature, the law practice seems to have started on the long decline. Our lifestyle needs to adjust to that new reality. It'll be better.

Now to work. I have a four-party mediation as the mediator in a few minutes, and don't have a single summary at this point. That makes for a tough day with no prep, but I'd rather spend a workday helping resolve a case than wading through discovery deadlines.