Month: February 2023

While I was in Miami, my brother and sister-in-law introduced me to a new television show. I’ve since been using it as part of my nightly wind-down. I’m uncertain that my ability to use this show to relax is a wholly positive reflection on me, but that doesn’t change the truth. It is a show whose protagonist is a private detective in London, one with a checkered family history and half a leg missing from an IED blast in Afghanistan. The cases, the subject matter, everything is more pathological (and maybe disturbing) than an American program would be. American programming relies more on displayed violence and gore, British programming on psychology and subtlety. C.B. Strike is definitely not one for the children and is probably not one for many adults either. It is certainly much darker than Sherlock ever was and at least as dark as The Fall.

I’ve had too many posts about television in this newsletter thus far this year. This gives me notice that I need to inject some novel activity into my life again. Being able to make that observation is a side benefit to publishing on a regular cadence. My archive serves as a quasi-journal of what I was doing or thinking about during a particular week. That wasn’t the purpose of starting the newsletter. The purpose wasn’t creating the pressure of meeting a regular publishing deadline either. Both, though, have been pleasant side effects.

I have spent more time in South Florida over the past year than I expected I would spend there in my entire life. Part of this has been the result of business decisions to learn more about and become involved with digital assets, a nascent industry largely bereft of lawyers and so a blue ocean to target as a growth area.

An even larger part of this has been my brother’s decision to work and live in Miami. It is not a decision I will make myself—I hardly visit the beach even when I stay nearby and I prefer not to be in a place with enough heat and humidity to feel like a low-grade sauna. After each of my visits, I have written in this chronicle that I have no desire to deal with Miami’s traffic or its climate. That hasn’t changed. What was different this time is that I spent a longer period of time down there, including some time during a normal work week for my brother and sister-in-law. My workday was the same, short bursts of work interspersed between meetings in whatever time zone was necessary. Their workdays were also the same, much more of a 9 to 5 schedule than I have had since I worked for the government. It felt weird being in Miami surrounded by people living a more-or-less normal life. And other than me choosing restaurants for dinner where they wouldn’t normally eat, that’s what we did. It was a nice jolt for me, just different enough to be worthwhile. I just wish that I had completed my CLE requirements earlier so that I wasn’t forced to catch up on them during the afternoons. Oh well.

I closed a chapter in my personal life this week. I packed all of the things from my apartment and moved them into storage. All of my work is digital, none of my clients are local, and life in Raleigh didn’t unfold as I’d hoped. So I am moving on. I’m not 100% sure what that means or where I’ll end up but it was time for a new beginning. Now I begin another in-between period waiting on the next chapter to begin. I don’t have any grand reflections on the current state of things. One day I hope I’ll look back on this time with positive thoughts. For now it’s just a matter of pressing forward and meeting the tasks in front of me.