the facelift

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the truth about VD ;)

Ok team, so for some reason, I've heard more than the usual grumbling about Valentine's Day this year, and I think it's time somebody gave it to you straight. 

When we were growing up, every single kid showed up to school on Valentine's Day just a little bit nervous about what might happen.  Maybe you were giving a valentine to someone you hoped liked you as "more than just a friend."  Or maybe you heard from some kids at school that so-and-so liked you, and you hoped beyond hope that he or she would give you one of the "special" valentines this year.  Most of you agonized over who got what valentine - careful not to convey the wrong message to the boy or girl who spit during band practice, but sure to include an extra heart or two on the envelope of the valentine for your crush.  Valentine's Day, even then, was hell.  We went home from school on Valentine's Day having a pretty good sense of whether or not the person we liked actually liked us back.

And guess what... nothing has really changed since then.

People (generally guys) always say things "Valentine's Day is so stupid" or "Why do we have to have a holiday to tell someone they're loved?"  What I want to know, is why does it have to be so painful to let someone know you like them, love them, appreciate them, respect them or want the best for them?  That's what it's really about.  Who cares if there's one day a year devoted to it?  Who cares if Hallmark gets involved and it's the highest sales day of the year for chocolate shops?  Who cares if "giving flowers on Valentine's Day is too cliche?" 

I would ask the Valentine's Day naysayers if they give chocolates or flowers any other day of the year.  Most likely, the answer to that question is no.  And what's really going on is that your significant other is hoping, really hoping, that maybe Valentine's Day will give you an excuse to actually be sweet (and maybe even a little bit romantic)... cliche or not.

I highly doubt that you would ever hear someone who regularly gets flowers, chocolates or other romantic gestures complain about his or her significant other forgetting, ignoring or totally blowing Valentine's Day.  Those people never complain - either because their significant other has enough common sense to also be romantic on Valentine's Day or they really, truly don't care about romance on Valentine's Day because they get enough of it every other day of the year.

The people who are disappointed about a lack of TLC on v-day are those who don't get it any other day and wake up on Valentine's morning a little bit nervous, a little bit excited that maybe today would be the day where the person they like lets them know they're liked back.  That's really all this day is about.

So for those of you who may have screwed it up royally this year, on the one day someone was hoping for you to tell them how much they're liked, loved, appreciated or respected... please know that there really are 364 other days this year for you to clean up your act. At the end of the day, everyone deep down just wants to know they're liked, holiday or no holiday.

I hope there’s love at the end of your day to take you away.

– Dr. Dog

robots and spam

After my most recent post, I woke up the next morning to an email notification letting me know that someone had posted a comment to my blog.  For the first time ever, the commenter wasn't my mom, best friend, aunt, dogsitter or law school classmate. It was someone I didn't even know.  A complete stranger had posted to my blog.  As I lay in bed reading my email notification (yes, I can admit it, I check my email immediately after my alarm goes off), it hit me:  I was big time now.  Totally blogospherely legit.  My blog was out there in cyberspace, and random people were reading it. And they were commenting. You have got to be kidding me.  This "viral" thing really DOES happen on its own, doesn't it?  As I patted myself on the back for my literary popularity, I clicked to my blog and read the comment:

Criminal lawyer make good support on client need and make that free from legal harassments. That has the best law situation which make it excellence.  Best Criminal Lawyers in Toronto. -posted by robertducket

Hmm.  That's weird.  Ok, so maybe I was attracting illiterate fans.  A fan is a fan though, right?  Wrong.  Not when the fan is a robot.  Robertducket was a robot.  So was Marry Lee, who posted shortly after robertducket and told me: The article is worth while reading, I like it very much and which you shared the info in this post is very useful. Thanks for sharing a wonderful post.  

It took a consult with our social media strategist for me to quickly learn the purpose of those "enter the numbers and letters you see below" boxes.  It's to fight off robots, and clearly, I had been infiltrated.

I'm still oddly flattered by the fact that the robots chose me.  There has to be some sort of code that assesses which blogs are read frequently enough to be worth spamming... right?  That's what I'm telling myself anyway. 

My robot attack is definitely a good step in the viral direction. 

blog on a receipt

[This post, like so many others, started weeks ago.  Unlike the others, it began on a receipt.  I was incredibly inspired at the time,  but I never got around to finishing this post.  Last Friday night, I spent the evening with these ladies - the fruit of this night in Albany and the blog post on a receipt].

***

I am sitting here, writing this post on the back of a receipt.  It's the perfect emotional storm for this girl, who's on a work trip to Albany.  Having recently gone gluten-free (that's a post in itself), I'm happy to "blame" my work meal of choice on a dietary necessity.  It's a BYOB restaurant, and I'm at sea level... which means I can easily consume a bottle of wine on my own, without qualms or apologies.

- Receipt blog (the beginning of gratitude-filled introspection)

***

I spent most of last week out in Albany on a (very successful and inspiring) work trip.  We're finally getting to that place where you can see the client transitioning to your side and you really feel like a team.  It's the place where you know the relationship that has been forming organically over the last few months is finally solidifying.  And it's genuine.  It's the best.

Our last night in upstate New York, I was on my own for dinner, which was a welcome reprieve after a day of non-stop presentations.  Yelp is the greatest resource while traveling, and I found an excellently-rated BYOB sushi restaurant within walking distance from my hotel.  Victory.

My hotel was also located adjacent to the Albany Law School, so I wasn't surprised to be seated next to a table of law school girl friends.  I was by myself and had accidentally left my Twilight book at the hotel, so I didn't have a whole to do besides listen to their conversation.  Well, that and consume the entire bottle of wine I had brought with me (it was BYOB after all...).  A couple glasses in, I was engrossed in the story of how one of the girls was so pissed at "Mike" because he didn't call her over Christmas break.  Apparently, she and Mike had been dabbling in being more than friends (and of course, but "dabbling," I mean "diddling").  She had even given Mike her Trust & Estates outline during finals.  Mike never really got Trusts like she did.  She didn't have to do that for him.  And after all that, he didn't even text her once over break.  She really didn't want to go back to class the following Monday.  A la "He's Just Not That Into You," her friends gave her every reason in the book for why she didn't hear from Mike.  Mike was probably just spending a lot of time with his family.  He probably didn't want to bother her while she was with her family.  Yeah, he was probably just being respectful.  He knew how close she was with her family, after all.

The conversation then turned to how good it was to be back and how they had all missed each other, even if it had been nice to be home for Christmas.  The sushi had been gone for awhile (both theirs and mine), and the girls were at that point in the night where they needed to decide whether to order another bottle of wine and go for it or call it an early night.  Unfortunately for the sake of my entertainment, they decided not to order the second (or maybe it would have been their third) bottle, and I was soon left to my own thoughts and the regret of leaving my laptop at the hotel.

I poured another glass of wine (because it would have been wasteful not to). 

We were those girls once.  Hours spent in study rooms and Thursday nights at sushi dinners.  So much angst and advice in each locale.  We (ok, I) also had had a "Mike," Trust & Estates outlines and resentment for the cost of law books.  We too had enjoyed our Christmas breaks, but somehow felt that getting back to school and returning to our group was what really felt like coming home. 

I suddenly missed my girlfriends so badly it hurt.  So, I comprised a group text to tell them where I was and how much my neighbors reminded me of us back in the day.  Then the texts from across the country began pouring in.  And I found myself laughing out loud or outright crying, depending on the text. (The servers at the sushi restaurant thought I was absolutely nuts).  More than any other emotion, though, I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for the girls in my life.  We got lucky.  Really, really lucky.

We're all spread out now, doing very different things with our lives.  Salt Lake to Chicago to (soon-to-be) St. Louis.  There have been heartbreaks and weddings.  Breakups and babies.  Vacations and embarrassment.  Birthdays and come to Jesuses (and other come to Jesuses). We've run marathons and adopted puppies... And I'm amazed at how quickly the time passes.

Those Albany law school girls have so much ahead of themselves, and things are going to change for them like they changed for us.  I hope they know how lucky they are.  With law school, it's easy to lose track of the gratitude in the grueling (there's a "forest in the trees" comment somewhere here too), and at the risk of sounding cliche, or even outright cheesy, my friends were the best thing to come out of law school for me.  Lord knows it wasn't the "being a lawyer" part.  And it certainly wasn't the debt part.

People ask me all the time if I regret going to law school, spending all that money on a career I ended up hating, wasting time learning something I may never actually use.  My answer has always been, and will continue to be, the same: Never.  I met some of the greatest women in the world because of law school, and it wouldn't trade that for anything. 

I love being unexpectedly reminded of what really matters.   

"Writing is like prostitution.  First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money."  -Moliere

between the eyes

Yoga keeps me honest.   Especially in the routine parts of my life - the things I do on a daily basis without really thinking about them.  Running with the dog this morning, I could feel every muscle of my body, thanks to an intense flow class earlier this week.  I had gotten away from yoga while training for the Chicago Marathon.  While I had had a great run (both literally and figuratively), those weeks had easily turned into months.  And my yoga mat never left the backseat of my car.

I hadn't really been feeling (or acting) like myself, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was that felt different.  Don't get me wrong... I was having an awesome time.  Way more fun than 28 year olds should be having.  And part of me felt like I was in college again.  While I didn't really do anything "wrong" or "bad" (acknowledging of course that morality is a bit relative), I felt reckless, and I didn't like it one bit.  More than anything, I didn't feel like myself.  I didn't feel centered.

Getting back to yoga was something I had been meaning to do for months, but I had just never got around to it.  Instead, I went through the motions of my daily routine.  Sure, I was running.  But I never really pushed myself or changed my route.  Instead, I just got through the same 5 mile loop day in and day out, just to be able to check the box next to "workout" for that day.  Something needed to change.

So, I held my breath and purchased an unlimited month at Core Power Yoga. And I finally feel like I'm getting back to my old self again.  The craziest part is, I didn't fully recognize that something was "wrong" until I realized it was back to being right.  I'm thinking, and I'm present.  I'm acting with intention.  I'm reading. I'm aware of just how freaking lucky I am.  I'm engaging.  I know that I have enough.  I know that I am enough.  I remember to look at the big picture.  I know I need people.  I'm inspired.

All of this from spending a few hours a week on my mat, sweating my butt off next to complete strangers and asking myself to do just a little bit better while also demanding that I be satisfied with where I'm at.  This is an incredibly difficult balance for me to achieve.

At dinner, a friend suggested that I look into a blog she knew I would love.  I went home that night and stayed up for hours reading... and reading... and reading.  It's called Momastery, and it will rock your world (whether you're a mom or not).  Every now and then, a writer hits me right between the eyes and inspires me to do more.  To be more honest.  To write more freely.  To not be afraid.  Glennon's words and her story do even more than that to me.  I honestly don't know that I will ever be the same having read her work.

In writing this post, I'm suddenly struck by the irony of the phrase "between the eyes."  I'm sure the yogis out there got it the moment I said it.  But there's also another phrase that goes something like: "if you have to explain it, then you didn't deliver it properly."  So, I'll leave it here and hope my delivery was effective enough to make my point.  And if not, then I guess I'll have to do better next time.

numbers don't lie

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending an awesome wedding in Madison with old friends.  The recent discovery of a gluten intolerance meant I could not participate in the college-style beer consumption while touring our old stomping grounds in a trolley for wedding party pictures.  That, combined with being one of the only single attendees at the wedding, had me at the bar ordering a mandarin martini promptly upon arrival at the reception.

The really outgoing and awesome girlfriend of one of my college friends quickly approached me and introduced herself.  She didn't really know anyone at the wedding, and within two minutes of talking to her, I felt like we had been friends for years.  As I instructed the bartender on my martini preferences (more dry than sweet), my new friend, Christina, was suddenly engrossed in conversation with a short, soft-spoken older woman standing next to her at the bar.  My martini arrived, and I was scanning the room for who I should talk to next when Christina quickly turned to me, her eyes huge.  She grabbed my arm and mouthed, "you HAVE to talk to this lady."  Shaking her head, she turned back to the older woman and bent down so the woman could speak directly into her ear.  I learned later that the woman's name was Beverly Kay.  She was a friend of the bride's parents.  And she lived in the town I grew up in.  It was eerie already.

Christina and Beverly began writing numbers on a piece of paper, and I realized this woman was a psychic of some kind.  Immediately, I was skeptical.  I find astrology very intriguing, but "psychics" were a little much.  Over the next few minutes, I caught bits and pieces of what Beverly had to say to Christina, but more importantly, it was impossible to ignore Christina's reaction.  At the end of her reading, Christina grabbed my arm and pushed me over to Beverly.  Talk to her.  You HAVE to talk to her.  Come find me when you're done, and she walked away dumbfounded.

Beverly introduced herself to me and immediately told me to write down my birthday month and day.  I liked where this started.  Those who know me, know how proud of my birthday I am and that I take every opportunity to talk about how it was the coolest possible day to be born that year.  Clearly, Beverly was my kind of lady.  As I wrote down the 8 and the 3, it was Beverly's turn to grab MY arm.  I've been doing this, in one fashion or another, since I was 5 years old, she whispered.  And in all my years, I have only met four other people with my birthday.  You're the fifth.  She quickly began writing down numbers and muttering under her breath.  She told me how she knew these numbers inside and out because they were her numbers too. You're witty and animated.  Your friends think you're funny and you like to own a room.  But sometimes you go too far and put your foot in your mouth.  Then, you're confused when no one thinks it's funny.  Ummm... yep, that's accurate.  Go on Beverly, you have my attention.

She next instructed me to write down my birth year: 1983 (it's worth noting that this was NOT also her birth year).  Again, she jumped in with a flurry of numbers and muttering.  Her eyes poured into the cocktail napkin in front of us.  Suddenly, she stopped and looked up at me.  She cocked her head to the side and a small smile twitched at the corners of her mouth.

So when are you going to start writing those books?

I recoiled like I had been punched in the stomach.  Chills from head to toe, and my eyes immediately filled with tears.  Christina, who had been watching me from across the room, undoubtedly anticipating this reaction, was by my side in a second.  All I could do was shake my head.  Beverly waited patiently (she clearly got this response often).  I took a deep breath and stepped toward her again.  You're very talented.  This is going to be a great year for you, but you need to get started now.  Don't wait. 

...And with that, I let someone else have a turn.  I had heard all I needed to hear.  It's funny... out of all the things a psychic could have told me, that was the one that went straight to my soul.  Interestingly, however, it's not the thing I would have asked about, given the chance.  I suppose I have to believe she probably knew that too.  Actually, I don't "have" to believe anything.  Which is why it doesn't matter to me whether Beverly is a mind-reader, a really good mathematician, or just a lucky guesser. 

What matters is, she was right.

Quite literally rocking my world right now.

i am not an island

If you want to go quickly, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
-African proverb

help, help*

There’s nothing like the adrenaline of running sprinting through the airport knowing you have a one in a million chance of making your flight, but hoping beyond hope that somehow you pull it off.  Thanks to the help of a GREAT friend (who thought I was asking him to help me change my flat tire, when, in actuality, I was asking him to drive me to the airport during rush hour traffic), I’m miraculously on my flight to Milwaukee.  Thank you, NateDogg – you’re the epitome of awesome.

 

As my heart rate slowly returns to normal and the coughing and wheezing lets up (yes, seriously), I find myself engaged in a bit of adrenaline-induced introspection.

Why do I have SUCH a hard time asking for help?  I anticipate that this post will be as much personal as it is professional, despite the author’s preference that it be strictly the latter.  The fact that my friend thought I was asking him to come downtown and help me change my tire illustrates explicitly what I’m going to discuss in this post.  Why didn’t (couldn’t) I just say to him, “I’m in a really bad spot.  I have a flat tire, and I REALLY need a ride to the airport right this second if I have any chance of making my flight?”? (This grammar nazi isn’t quite sure that’s the accurate punctuation, but just go with it).

Instead, what I said to him (and a couple others) was more along the lines of, “Hey!  How’s it going? … Good, good! ....  Oh me?  Well, yeah, I’m not so great.  I actually have to catch a flight to Wisconsin, and I just came out to my parking lot, and I have a flat tire…. Yeah, seriously.  Can you believe it?  Murphy’s law, right? … Yeah, well I don’t know what I’m going to do.  What are you doing right now? … If you’re busy, I’m sure I could grab a cab.”  NateDogg, who knows me so well and, admittedly, over the years, has taken me under his wing as a bit of a second dependent (his wife is one of my besties), immediately said, “No, no, I’ll come help you.  Where are you?”

Thinking he was coming to help me change my tire, he called to let me know he had arrived at the designated corner.  I bounded out of my office, threw my suitcase in the backseat and hopped in the front seat.  “Thank you SO much for taking me to the airport.  You’re the absolute BEST!!!  Do you think we can make it there in 25 minutes?!?!” I gushed, breathless (ps – It was rush hour).

Ummm… what?  Wait… Um, yeah, I guess I can take you to the airport.  I just need to make a couple calls because I’m supposed to be at a dinner down south… No, no, it’s ok - I’ll take you.  Wait, where’s your car?  I thought you needed help with your tire?

Huh?  My tire?  Oh.  Shit.  “I know you believe you understand what you think I said; however, I’m not sure you realize that what you heard, is not what I meant.”

It’s my job to manage expectations.  I am expected to tell it to people straight and let them know what’s ahead.  And from the feedback I’ve received, I think I’m good at my job.  I don’t say this arrogantly… I have A LOT to learn, but I like to think I’m direct and people respect me for it.  So why, WHY, do I have such a difficult time saying to a close, trusted friend, “Hey, I’m incredibly vulnerable right now and completely dependent on your support.  Please, help me.”?

Why can’t I tell my superiors or colleagues that I can’t handle something, that I need direction, support, resources, etc.?  Why do I wait until it’s to the point that it’s absolutely unbearable before I’ll cry uncle?

I perceive a request for help as a personal weakness.  There, I said it.  Let’s start there (I realize I’m well into this post, and I think I’m just “starting”).  I hate admitting that I can’t do something for myself, which means I have a really, really (REALLY) difficult time asking for help.  I know this is flat-out wrong, on many levels (both personal and professional), but I just can’t help the internal reaction I get from admitting defeat.  I’m cringing just writing this.  I hate it.  Surprisingly, however, when other people ask me for help, I don’t perceive them as weak (when requests for help are used reasonably, of course – not necessarily sparingly, just reasonably).  In fact, I love to help other people.  This is strictly a self- perception, and it’s very much a double standard.

Before I effectively (unintentionally) tricked NateDogg into taking me to the airport, I had two VERY good friends say to me “I am busy, but if you NEED me to take you to the airport, just tell me and I’ll take you.”  And I couldn’t tell them.  Of course I needed them to take me to the airport – how else was I going to get there?  I knew I needed them to take me to the airport.  I knew my flight left in an hour.  I knew that even if I could even get a cab, it would be 65 bucks and the driver likely wouldn’t absorb my sense of urgency. I knew I was out of options. But I couldn’t form the words.  Three simple words that absolutely kill me to admit: I. Need. Help.

It’s professionally reminiscent of the moment when my boss told me to start making calls and begin building a team because we were to the point where I needed help.  I don’t need help, not yet anyway.  I got this, I thought defiantly.  But, lucky for me, he insisted (“as a precaution”), and I followed his instruction and made my first call for “help.”  We hired my referral (who is AWESOME) pretty much immediately.

Three months later, I’ve made two specific calls for help, and I couldn’t imagine my life without them.  There have been a couple of projects and a couple of clients that I, admittedly, only reluctantly released control over.  I had taken it as an insult when colleagues and superiors told me that there was no way I would be able to chew all that I had bitten off.  This week, however, we all laughed at how insane it would have been for me to have held on to those pieces.  I let go of them, and somehow, my days are still overflowing, my job is still fulfilling and I’m still respected.

Thank you, NateDogg, for helping me when I couldn’t ask for it.  Thank you to my two other friends for offering to help me, if I could just ask for it.  Both are more valuable than you’ll know. 

* There’s a famous Denver homeless man, who is notorious for violently shaking his change cup at you and hollering “HELP, HELP” as you walk by.  Because of him, the phrase has taken on a bit of a second meaning among some of us locals.

other people's wisdom

Recently, I've been hearing the same message a number of different ways - that it's really important to spend time learning from other people's experiences.  This means committing some serious time to reading business books and blogs.

Before I do that though, I need to admit that this isn't really appealing to me.  I love to read, but admittedly, my literary choices range from smart fiction to trashy magazines.  By way of example, I'm currently enjoying the second book in the Twlight series, and I apologize for nothing.  In a way, I blame law school for this (shocker, I know).  But, I feel as though I reached my lifetime "educational reading" quota somewhere around the middle of second year.  Since then, it's been very difficult for me to spend "free time" reading anything that isn't mindless.  I'd like to change that this year. 

A couple of my close colleagues and I continually remind each other that by experiencing the ups and downs and goods and bads of working at a start-up, we're getting our MBAs - one lesson at a time.  It's such a phenomenal opportunity that I would be crazy to not maximize the experience.  I need to think of business books and blogs as my course materials and start taking them very seriously. 

This guy's blog is a great place to start.

on the first day of Christmas (break)

... I stayed up with my parents drinking wine in front of the fireplace until 2 am (I know this doesn't rhyme with "pear tree," but I got tired of thinking about it).   The equally glorious part is I got to sleep in until 11 am this morning.  My dad is making potato pancakes, and I'm drinking coffee and blogging.  It's really nice to be home for Christmas.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who uses Christmas time as the evaluation point in the year to reflect on what has gone well and what changes I need to make in the coming year.  It isn't a conscious evaluation process.  I certainly don't sit down with a form and rank my experiences one to five, but instead, it seems to be something that just happens on its own.  This year, I had 16 hours of driving for this evaluation process.  16 hours of driving and some really great music.  It was like Pandora had a window to my soul and played all of the songs I didn't even know I wanted to hear.

The conclusion of my evaluation: It never ceases to amaze me the difference a year makes.

I think this can be best illustrated by comparing  last year's Christmas party to this year's.  First, read about last year.  How do you know you've hit rock bottom in law?  When your ranting offends the bartender at the firm Christmas party.  Bartenders have decencies of steel, and offending those decencies is quite the feat.

While I definitely "over-stepped" and succeeded in speaking my mind at both events, the messages were completely different.  Last year, the crux of my rant was that I was wasting my life, my hard work and energy, and I was miserable.  This year, my boss and I got into a heart-to-heart at the bar over tidal wave shots.  I went on and on... and on about how much I love what I'm doing and what an incredible opportunity I have with this company.  I told him point blank that I want to make a million dollars.  My inner Veruca Salt came out a bit, and I may have been embarrassingly adamant.  But the next day in the office, my boss gave me a high five and laughed.  I sheepishly apologized for talking his ear off.  He said, Nic, I want to make a million dollars too.  More than that.  So let's do it. 

It's been a good year.  A really, really good year.

the oyster

I have been waiting for this exact morning for weeks now... my own house, the Christmas tree coinciding beautifully with a Christmas playlist, a certain brown dog, a great cup of coffee with cinnamon and nutmeg, and absolutely zero obligations.  This weekend is my oyster.

Like so many times I sit down to blog, I'm prompted to get back after it because I received a really nice compliment from someone who "loves my blog" and wishes I would write more often.  Thanks Mary.

Also like the many other times I've sat down to write, I don't have a particular topic in mind.  There are so many places this post could go, and suddenly I'm overwhelmed by how much I have to write about.  It's a funny contrast from 15 minutes ago.  The coffee was brewing and the brown dog was eating his brown chunks, and the thought actually crossed my mind, "I don't think I have anything to write about."  Here I am, three paragraphs later, trying to prioritize where this post should go.

Friday morning, I randomly ran into a good friend and mentor (friend first, mentor second) on the corner of 16th street downtown.  I rolled down my window and hollered to get her attention.  She came running over to my car and immediately told me she's moving.  To California.  On Monday.  We haven't seen each other in a couple months, but she is responsible for a huge chunk of my current professional happiness.  Those of you who have heard my "how and why I got out of law" spiel, would know her as opposing counsel in the deal from hell.  My firm represented the borrower and she represented the bank.  Despite having to deal with my intolerable clients from hell, she was always very respectful to me and my team, even at 3 in the morning as we frantically made changes to the documents from hell (see if you can find the pattern here). 

Finally closing day arrived... this is the day you wait for - the day in a young transactional lawyer's career where you're supposed to feel like all the blood, sweat and tears contained in the thousands of pieces of paper spread out on the massive conference table were somehow worth it.  It's the culmination of months (and sometimes years) worth of work.  Even when your clients are nice and appreciative, you deserve one hell of a drink when the closing is over.  When your clients suck... you deserve twelve drinks.  My own team wasn't able to take for me drinks post-closing, and at the end of the day, as I cleaned up the conference table and organized all of my executed documents, blue pens and "sign here" tabs, I silently prayed that somehow all the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed.  Recognizing that I was the only one from my team left, my now-friend asked if she could take me for a drink.  A strong drink.  And I happily accepted.  We've been friends ever since.

She's the one who basically told me that I was on the path to being her in 8 years.  A go-getter attorney who knew early on that perhaps law wasn't the best fit but whose pride (and massive debt) wouldn't let her admit it.  She talked of the entitlement that comes with working ungodly hours in a job you hate - having the house and the car (on top of the law debt) that simply wouldn't allow you to make less than a six figure, big firm salary.  We drank wine and discussed the toll of law on relationships.  We compared the politics of big firms to small firms and acknowledged the "boys club"mentality of the whole "business."  I explained my view of how the law firm structure is inherently flawed, and how associates, partners and clients can never really be on the same team.  She told me that the work doesn't change, and more often than not, the politics don't change either.  Ultimately, her insight drove me to the conclusion that if I couldn't do it now - if I hated the work and the politics kept me up at night now... then I certainly wasn't going to be able to do it for the rest of my life.  So I quit.  And I've never been happier.

To hear my friend say that she quit her law job, packed her stuff into storage and didn't really have a career plan for when she got to California almost made me happier than my own decision to leave law.  She looked great, with excitement all over her face and sheer terror in her eyes - exactly the way she should feel... but she was doing it.  She was giving professional happiness a shot.  You can't win the lottery if you never buy a ticket. 

I don't know if she knows how influential her opinions and insights were on me and my decision to leave law.  Yes, of course, I had the perfect storm of opportunities and I was in the right place at the right time, and have a lot of people to thank for that.  But in the end, I get to do something that I love today because opposing counsel took me for a martini over a year ago and gave it to me straight. 

I wish her a world of happiness and a career where she can succeed simply by working hard and being herself.  The world is her oyster, and it seems she is finally understanding that. 

my v card

... I lost it last week, and it was glorious.  I couldn't stop grinning.  Really, it was magical.  I had heard that once you know, you "know," but I didn't really know... until I knew.  Ya know?

The analogies could go on...  and on... and on.

I did my first vlookup last week (sorry to those who thought this post might be about something a little different).  Vlookup, in Excel, is the coolest thing I have learned in a really, really long time.  I am, without a doubt, a right-brainer - abhorrent to numbers, calculations, budgets, math, directions, formulas... you get the picture.  In college, I studied my butt off for a D in Accounting.  Those who know me, know that "D's" aren't really my thing (in more ways than one... What is going ON with this blog post?!?!) 

Anyway, I had always figured that Excel was better suited to left-brain people and found irony in the fact that I the only time I used Excel was to manage my personal budget (translation: I didn't use Excel very often at all).  Miraculously, my colleague is an Excel guru, and in the short time we've worked together, I've learned a boatload about what Excel could do for me, my client management and (perhaps most importantly) my sanity.  After sitting on the Excel sidelines for a few weeks watching magic happen, I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and give it a shot.

With some straightforward instruction, a little left-brain thinking and a few key strokes, I was able to isolate a small, detailed and specific group of people out of a file of hundreds.  It was incredible, and beat the heck out of ctrl-F for hours on end.  I was glowing for the rest of the afternoon.

I had no idea it could be so good.

trying my fictional hand

As I've mentioned, I recently signed myself up to write a serial fiction piece with some other writers from The Docket (a legal publication in Denver that tends to be less "legal" and more "publication," and never insists that I actually write about the law).  Anyway, I was writer number three in the series and hadn't read either of the pieces before me until about two days before my deadline.  As I've also mentioned, they say that in order to actually become a legit writer, you should drown yourself with hard-to-meet deadlines.  If on these deadlines, you can produce some decent work, you might have a shot at making writing more than just a hobby.  That's not, however, why I waited until the 11th hour to start my piece.  It had just been one of those weeks after one of those weeks after one of those weeks, and all of a sudden, my deadline was in my face and I was less than prepared.  To make matters worse, I wasn't thrilled about the topic: law school meets murder mystery - a somewhat cheesy whodunnit about cops, law students .... and mmmmuhrrr-der.  


So I did what I could do.  I set up shop at a really cute local wine bar that conveniently had a one-person table outside.  I ordered a great glass of wine, and I stopped thinking about it so much.

This piece isn't necessarily my greatest work.  But for my first published attempt at trying my hand at fiction, it worked out.  And more than anything, I learned an important lesson on this one (a lesson that I've also been learning recently in other areas of my life): Sometimes, it really is better to not have a plan.

Part I of the series can be found here.
Part II found here.

And now... Part III here. Ta da.

Murders final

the more things change...

…the more they sometimes actually really change.

My view of airports and airtime has shifted dramatically in the last 6 months.  It used to be that going to the airport was something I planned my entire day (or week) around.  Like, I have to go to the airport today for a flight, so I better make sure I don’t leave any dishes in the sink.  Or, I have to fly on Wednesday, so I better get a car wash tomorrow.  Or, I’m flying today, so I should really buy a pair of designer sunglasses at the airport.  I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but we do it.  Or, I used to do it, anyway. [OK, fine, in full disclosure, I may have purchased a pair of designer sunglasses at the airport yesterday on my way to Jacksonville.  An awesome, yet unnecessary, impulse buy.  I’ll also be honest and admit that the thought crossed my mind: If the plane goes down, this will have been a total waste of money.]  But for the most part, these thoughts rarely occur to me anymore.

Maybe it’s that, for the general population, flying is still a novelty, and for many, a nerve-inducing novelty.  I’m not the only person I know who thinks the more I fly, the less scary, the less out-of-the-ordinary, the less… justifying? it becomes.  All of a sudden, flying just became a part of the day-to-day, and 8 hours spent on two planes and in three airports (and that’s with everything being on schedule) trying to get home after a one day trip hardly seems like that big of a deal.  It’s an interesting paradigm shift for me. 

I spent a year living in Madrid and a summer living in Argentina.  During those times, I had the incredible opportunity to travel.  At the time I was doing it, I knew it was an incredible opportunity, but I didn’t, for one minute, think it might be my only opportunity to travel like that.  And, for the record, I’m beginning to resent my own lack of realistic-ness (realism?).  I often found it ironic that I had seen more of other continents than I had my own - traveled more in other countries than I had my own.  It feels like I’m chipping away at that dichotomy now week-by-week.  For better or worse.

What never ceases to amaze me in my travels… is mankind.  The human race is truly unbelievable.  And I don’t mean this in an awe-inspired “wow, we’ve really done some amazing things [insert 'electricity, space travel and the iPhone' here] while on this planet” kind of way.  I mean that in a “sometimes I’m surprised at the failure of Darwinism” kind of way.  In other words, the human race is not unbelievable, it’s un-be-LIEV-able.  Like the woman at the Jacksonville airport, screaming at her two sons (who were running AMUCK) while also screaming into the phone at her husband (ex-husband? boyfriend? parole officer? whatever.) about how she really, REALLY needed a [explicative] cigarette, but “they’re gunna make her [explicative] go through security again to have one.”  Now, I don’t have a problem with the F-bomb, per se.  I just had a problem with that woman.  Seriously lady… get a handle on your life.

Or what about the man de-boarding the plane ahead of me, who realized that the one roll-aboard left in the overhead compartment was not his?  He pushed me, with both hands, and proceeded to get in the face of the flight attendant standing behind me and scream at her like the missing bag was not only her fault, but also contained the life-saving serum to cure his inoperable, flesh-eating disease.  It was ridiculous.  After hearing a few F-bombs from him and a couple of “sir, please calm down’s” from the flight attendant, I got off the plane and entered the jetway to see a gentle-looking woman holding a similar-looking bag, patiently waiting to clear up this mess.  Guess what.  She accidentally grabbed the wrong bag as she got off the plane.  Calm the F down… sir.

And don’t even get me started about the guy sitting next to us at O’Brien’s eating (slurping, slopping, licking, picking) his buffalo wings.  Or the woman pretending not to hear her (way too old for this) child screaming “MOOOOOMMMMMYYYY” incessantly at the top of his lungs.  Or the kid sitting in the aisle seat of our row on a virtually empty plane who absolutely refused to move to his own row. 

I met some of the coolest people in the world (literally) while living and traveling abroad.  Mankind continually surprised me – in a beautiful way.  Traveling within my own country, however, has shocked and awed me in a significantly less desirable way.

 

I started out this blog post going in a very different direction.  I actually intended to write about how surprised I am at the way travel doesn’t “affect me” like it used to.  However, what started out with good intentions has clearly turned into a rant… which convinces me that perhaps traveling is taking its toll.  At least for today.  I’m exhausted and irritable.  Can you tell?  Don’t interrupt me when I’m asking a rhetorical question.

Road Warrior: the hoedown

Our team got into Philly and drove two hours through rush hour, to arrive at what we thought was our hotel, exhausted and ready for a relaxing night.  But it was the wrong Holiday Inn.  So was the next Holiday Inn we tried.  It turned out that OUR Holiday Inn was at least 20 minutes outside the city (in BFE, PA).  Foiled by Priceline... again. 

We finally arrived at our location and walked into a rundown lobby, with carpet from 1984 and a surly receptionist.  Tired and a bit slap-happy after a couple margaritas with the client, I noticed the "Manager on Duty" plaque and immediately burst out laughing.  Mr. Daniel Morningwake? The hotel manager's name is Morningwake?!?  That's incredible.  My coworkers looked over and immediately started laughing too.  That's like having a dentist named Dr. Tooth.  You can't make that shit up.  The receptionist stared at us blankly, mouthing "Morningwake" to herself a couple times and shaking her head simultaneously.  She finally looked up at us, made a face that clearly said "I don't get it" and gave us our room keys.  Welcome to the Holiday Inn Grantville, PA.

We proceeded to our rooms to discover the most uncomfortable beds in the universe, but at that point, it didn't matter.  I was wiped.  They say going from west to east is easier with the time change, but I actually think it's worse.  There is no excuse to be falling asleep at the dinner table at 9 pm because on your time, it's really 7 pm, but that trick never seems to work for me.  Knowing I shouldn't be tired makes me more tired.  Anyway, we woke up the next morning to decent Pennsylvania weather that proved amazing compared to the foot of snow Denver was slated to get that day.  Our client-filled day went incredibly well and our team was in high spirits come 4 o'clock.  The client's suggestion of spending a couple hours at Hershey Park in Hershey, PA was the perfect end to a good day and the beginning of a night like none other.

We were kids in a candy shop.  Literally.  After the Chocolate Tour (with singing cows!), we could not get to the candy room fast enough to voraciously swipe our debit cards and shovel the treats into our mouths.  Whatever type of subliminal messaging was being used in that tour... it worked.  Between the milkshakes, cookies, T-shirts and chocolate bars, it was only a matter of minutes before we were fat, dumb and happy, snapping pictures with the Hershey bars and enjoying the bliss of the sugar high before the nausea set in.

We continued the night of decadence with an incredible dinner (which included fabulous wine and lobster mac and cheese) and over-the-top witty banter.  The indulgence and laughter left everyone with side cramps as we hobbled to our cars.  Team Holiday Inn BFE loaded into the Santa Fe to begin the trek back to our hotel.  When we pulled in, one of my coworkers suggested a nightcap at The Saloon - the hotel bar.  We agreed and figured The Saloon would have a total of about three patrons, who, collectively, would have 7 teeth.  Au contraire.


The place was packed - not a seat to be had.  Not only that, it was HUGE, which was surprising because it was very unassuming from the front.  Clearly, The Saloon was the reason Holiday Inn BFE stayed in business because it certainly wasn't the comfort of the beds or the politeness of the staff.  Wide-eyed and jaws gaping, we turned the corner to find a stage with a live band and a massive dance floor filled with line-dancers.  It was incredible.  We somehow found a table on the other side of bar and ordered $2 beers.  I had never seen line-dancing before, at least not up close like this.  Holy cow,  that is some impressive stuff.  There's a different dance for every song (or, as Beans adamantly argued, a different song for every dance), and they all knew all the steps.  People partnered with anyone and everyone - couples of all different shapes, sizes and ages, everyone smiling and laughing and having a grand old time.  It was like nothing I had ever seen, and it totally put the electric slide to shame.  I've never been in the presence of so much dancing and sat so idly on the sidelines watching in awe.  It was a new experience for me.  And the band... they rocked.  One beer easily turned into three and nine o'clock slipped away to midnight before we reminded ourselves that we had meetings in the morning and a long trip back to Denver.  I was sad to call it a night, but amazed at what an incredible night it had turned out to be.

Priceline, thank you.  I owe you an apology and perhaps an extra $50 a night. #chillinattheholidayinn

Finding out your crappy hotel is home to the greatest hoedown this side of the Mississippi (or Ohio?) River.  AWESOME.

truth in educating

For awhile now, I've been comparing the student loan crisis to mortgage crisis and calling for some form of "truth in lending" practices when it comes to student loans.  I feel like I'm a pretty good snapshot of the American public - they just announced that student loan debt now exceed credit card debt in the U.S.  This has been true for me for years.  I can't decide if that should make me feel good about my credit card debt or feel terrible about my loans.  But considering no one should ever feel good about credit card debt, I should probably go with the latter.  Besides, I blame the latter for the former.  That's probably not good either.

Anyway, the newest news (is that redundant?) is that student loan debt now exceeds $1 Trillion in the United States.  One. Trillion. Dollars.  And no one is paying it back.  That's the stick.  I think we need to start focusing on the stick.  No one is actually paying these loans back.  And while some people are living for free in brownstones, most of us are just doing the best we can with what we've got.  And the best we can doesn't include an extra $1000 to throw at student loans.  I mean, the chocolate lab needs to eat, people (NOT to be confused with "the chocolate lab needs to eat people."  That would be terrible).

I digress.  The reason I sat down to write was because USA Today published a good article yesterday:  Lairs, Liars Pants on Fires (or whatever the plural would be).  My coworker pointed out the real title as some guy was reading the article on the plane yesterday, and I knew I had to write about it.

The reality is - people need to know the truth about law school - the lack of post-education jobs, the low salaries, the DEBT.  If, after all that, people are still going to law school and are somehow thinking they'll be "different" (translation: they'll actually come out of law with a job they like that can pay the ginormous bill of law debt), then they have no one to blame but themselves.

and now the stick

Student Loan Bailout.  This is brilliant.   And it just might be crazy enough to work.

It appears I never actually published this post... so I will publish it now because I have nothing more to say.