The Writing life
I don’t know why this legal process is giving me so much writing inspiration, but for anyone who has followed this blog for long can see the amount of words I’m putting out is exceeding past efforts by a long shot. Perhaps it’s because the law is actually really interesting and I guess 2, the more you write, the more you write. Writing is a habit, one that becomes more fluid with daily exercise. So I guess I’m a little bit a run.
It is interesting, though, thinking about why this issue is motivating me to write more than say selling $5m of new homes in 3 months to the coolest people around, or rebuilding my office team to a top notch level after a full year of re-jiggering, or raising a great kid, or the new land I’m looking at, or the hundred of other things I do weekly that actually pretty interesting. So, maybe if I continue to write, I’ll figure out why I continue to write about this, but at exact moment, I have no idea. Maybe the newness - the other stuff is sort of old hat. Maybe the mix of personal, business, legal strategy necessitated really sparks my brain. Maybe it’s just the education I’m getting - if I lived closer to a University I’m sure I’d be taking classes all the time. Maybe this is why people become lawyers, because it’s interesting.
Maybe it’s the competition between parties. Maybe it’s the desire to win - I’ve always been very competitive. Maybe it’s because it’s helping me define my boundaries and lines that don’t get crossed after spending 22 years of taking one for the team 15 times a day just to keep the show going, since the show must go on.
I mean, I could easily write many pages full of things I have gratitude for, people I enjoy working with, efforts I’m impressed by, intelligence I’m awed by. My days are filled with people doing great work - which, in one way, is exactly why being treated and spoken to like piece of dog shit on the sidewalk was and always will be a trigger - I know how hard everyone is working. You don’t get to be on my team without being a hard-working SOB who leaves it on the field most days.
I mean, I could also write about all the stupid shit that happens each day, usually a result of someone doing something brainless, or maybe it’s just a result of us moving quickly at all times, or maybe it’s a combination of both. That would be fun, and probably healthy for me to vocalize.
So basically, my writing material is endless. You could say it’s a flaw in my motivation that it’s this issue that gets the writing juices flowing when so much other stuff could and should. But I’m flawed, that’s not news to anyone. A bit of misfit. My thinking is non-linear. I see things others don’t and don’t see what other’s do. I have the rare ability to be operationally proficient and very creative - typically you sacrifice one for the other. These opposing operation and creative talents pull uncomfortably in different directions. Maybe when I’m older I’ll get out of the operations end of things and stay in the creative lane - though, let’s be honest, sounds a little boring, since all the fun is in the operations, where you win, lose, live, die by your decisions and ability to motivate.
It’s funny with writing, or acting, or anything involving stage-craft - it’s just a front. Like right now on the blog I’m flexing the super-confident, hyper-aggressive gladiator, but that’s not really who I am. That’s my writing facade for this space in time. I guess priming the pump to build the audacity and courage to go into this battle with victory in mind. If you think it, you are it.
One thing I’ve learned over the years - and believe me - I’ve learned more in my lifetime than any person should, most of it coming after the age 40 - one thing I’ve learned is how careful you have to be when you find a good tool - be it an assistant, employee, or in this case, lawyer. I remember my first personal assistant/advisor (tangent alert - even calling someone my ‘assistant’ is something I do with hesitation, while Baumann had no trouble calling a young woman who was extremely accomplished ‘an administrative assistant or something’)- well, this advisor was good, and allowed me to accomplish and pursue many items on my to do list, and some of them weren’t that well thought out, and really weren’t that great of ideas.
So the lesson, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Same thing true, and I think very pertinent to this lawsuit, is with attorneys. Having a good attorney is important, but having a good attorney who lacks the credibility to advise against an action is dangerous as is one that will chase every stick that is thrown just to show off. Restraint derives from confidence. No action can be more of sign of strength than in-action. One of my most trusted advisors is the lawyer that I use for getting advice on the ups and downs, ins and outs of dealing with my ex-wife and the co-parenting we do. We do a good job together, but it’s not perfect, and on several occasions I contemplated going back to court to have this or that addressed. He never said no, and I think he would have done what I asked if in the end I asked, but in the interim, he lent me his time to listen to my issues and dilemmas, think about them, and walk me through the realities of what I was asking and seeking, and the most likely outcomes. He did it dispassionately, he did it intelligently, and he did it with my best interests in mind.
I can say with absolute clarity since it is my opinion and my perception and I've never seen this before, that a lot of the reason, if not the only reason, I'm in this current lawsuit is because how their attorney talked to me. He inflamed a volatile situation, threw gas on a fire that hadn't quit ignited, backed me into a corner where before his clumsy intervention there were a dozen resolution routes. That's actually being too generous - till his intervention, there wasn't even much spark in the fire- I don't even think my hackles were up- it was just a problem to be solved. And the same thing for the defendants, if this attorney advised them that aggression and attack was the prudent move, instead of a tip-toe out of a messy situation, then all I can say is, "I've been there'. I've been there 100x, when you realize too late you've gotten poor advice and counsel. When they realize they are wrong on the law, that they've actually been given poor advice from the very beginning, I wonder if they will blame me, or correctly gauge their error. Because if the strategy was to win before trial consuming an opponent with - how to phrase this - with legal moves, that strategy has been defeated.
And in the end, we never pursued any of my family law issues and concerns, since the courtroom is just not a great venue for getting what you want, compared to the costs - personal and financial - of the exercise. Even more so with family law, where you risk blowing up even an imperfect arrangement into something much worse.
