Author: James David (Page 22 of 27)

This week at work has been all about consolidation. We learned a number of lessons during our European sojourn that we are presently implementing. We continue to tighten our availability in order to improve our productivity, energy, and focus. We are making our intake process more standardized so that there is less slippage. We are building out improved documents as we learn best practices through doing more deals. We are consolidating relationships that we have made over the past few months that should prove fruitful for all involved. While we are taking a bit of a pause to incorporate what we learned into our working procedures, it isn’t much of a pause as we are moving towards what may be as many as seven or eight closings before the end of May. It is an exciting time for the business.

Over the weekend, I was also reminded of how important family and friends are. This is a different form of consolidation of some of the ideas I had while abroad but no less important. I was in Kentucky for a wedding-retirement-Derby party. On the drive, I picked up my brother and sister-in-law at the airport and was able to spend some time alone with them over dinner. On Saturday, a large number of people gathered at my parents’ home for the party and I was thrust back into the social life of a small town. This meant a great deal of talking about the business and of what has been recorded in these newsletters as many of my most faithful readers were in attendance.

It was decided that the most fun way to handle the horse race itself was to have a random drawing for horses in two pots. I did much the same once in college and hilarity ensued as everyone yelled at the television for two minutes, but this crowd was more educated about horse racing and more sedate. Well, most of the crowd was more educated about horse racing. I spent the race giving a running commentary to two of my young cousins who had never seen a horse race before. They were transfixed by everything going on around them during the race but I’m sure they will need further instruction. Everyone at the track was stunned by the result, so much so that you could almost hear the silence through the television, but somehow no one at the party was surprised when I won the loser pool. Yes, it may have been a random drawing, but I drew the horse that came in last place and so won the whole pool. Because of course that’s what happened.

The weekend was a marked contrast to much of the time I spent in Europe over the last month alone. This provides yet more fodder as I continue to think about how I want to live this phase of my life now that we have proven to ourselves that we can work from elsewhere.

When this post went out, I was aboard a plane flying back to the United States after almost four weeks in Europe. This was the first real test of whether we can truly work from anywhere in this legal practice, and it has been a qualified success. There are some additions that will be needed (i.e. getting a portable monitor like I mentioned last week), but our deals have kept progressing and our long-term clients have had their legal needs met. A few other observations follow.

This was my first time in Europe in the spring. The mornings and evenings have required jackets of varying thickness, but that is preferable to the rising humidity and temperatures in the high 80s to which I am returning. It has been an ideal time to be here. I have noted the temperature ranges and may take steps to increase the number of days during the year when I am in such climates.

Being in Europe and working west coast hours is not viable for me. The nine-hour time difference has not meshed with my early rising. This has not been helped by a lack of blackout curtains in my accommodations. I’m not sure what the answer will be to this problem, but further experimentation will be required to find a solution that doesn’t leave me dragging through half of the afternoons during the week.

Eating out at every meal has been both blessing and curse. It has given me a better feel for these cities, yes, but it has also been a frequent reminder that most of this trip has been spent alone and has meant that my diet has not been as regimented as I prefer. I will tweak these protocols when I take my next sojourn.

In order not to sacrifice on location for my Airbnb rentals, I opted for private rooms instead of having an entire place to myself in both Vienna and Berlin. Neither one worked as I had hoped. Instead of gaining a guide, I felt more like an intruder living a parallel life under the same roof in both apartments. Having a place to myself will also help with the food issue as I am more comfortable cooking somewhere that isn’t someone else’s kitchen who is sitting in the living room.

Being with other people created the potential for greater enjoyment. Some of the more enjoyable meals on this trip were in busy Parisian cafes with colleagues. And my weekend in Berlin had the most variation and spontaneity of any weekend so far this year as I leaned into the activities on offer as I reconnected with an old friend. This took me to a family birthday celebration, a Kreuzberg bar, some great doner kebab, and a meetup with a group of people I wish I could meet again. It wasn’t that the activities were only possible in Berlin (though there are few places that do doner kebab as well as here where the food was invented), it was that I was thrown into groups of people who accepted and even embraced my presence, the sort of thing I have never managed without some help even in the English-speaking world. It has left me wondering about possibilities. I don’t plan to take any action on these thoughts immediately, but it has left me wondering.

Different city, similar story this week. I wrote this in a coffee shop where I worked this morning. I’ve traveled from Vienna to Berlin. This iteration of the work-from-anywhere experiment will continue for another week for me. Then it will be back to the US to regroup and consolidate from what has been learned during this European sojourn. At a minimum, I’ve learned that I need a portable second monitor to make things work. If anyone has used one that they would recommend, I’m accepting suggestions. There have also been some lessons in scheduling, but I’m uncertain that those will be implemented soon as we don’t frequently need to manage nine-hour time differences when in North Carolina like we have been with our clients based on the West Coast during this trip.

Berlin and Vienna are very different cities. Vienna has more grandeur and feels older, more refined. It has the palaces, the Ringstrasse, the art at the Albertina and Belvedere, and the peddlers in ridiculous outfits trying to get people to attend classical music performances since Mozart lived in the city. I attended a chamber music concert at the opera house on Saturday. It was just short enough to maintain my interest, and while I’m glad I attended I’m not eager to attend another such performance in the near future. Berlin is grittier, has graffiti everywhere, and feels like the sort of place where there would be lots of black leather jackets if it were an American city. These differences are linked to the two cities’ different histories, but they go some way towards explaining why Berlin is not atop many Americans’ list of European cities they wish to visit. That said, there is an energy in Berlin that I didn’t feel in Vienna or Paris. Maybe it is just spring arriving later in Berlin and the timing of my visit, but I suspect there is more to it. This is the startup hub of continental Europe, and tomorrow I will attempt to get a glimpse of this by working out of one of the coworking spaces here. It isn’t likely I will make any connections while there (it is me, after all), but I will be in a place where a serendipitous connection might be possible.

There is also more variety in the food in Berlin. Even though I did not eat at the same restaurant twice in Vienna, I did have the same dishes several times. The first schnitzel I had was my favorite, so that was a little unfortunate. I am following the same rule in Berlin, but I don’t expect that I will have a doner kebab more than two or three times while I’m here (even though this is where the dish was created and the best of the genre can be found here). I have been eating out every single meal during this trip. That is not sustainable even if I did budget for it but does leave me wanting to eat at new restaurants when I get back to Raleigh and not just go back to the same three or four places I have frequented in recent months. Maybe I can even find a few people to participate in those culinary explorations.

My European exploits continue this week. I am now in an unseasonably cold Vienna. Not that that has stopped me from taking long walks in the morning and planning my days around meals at restaurants I want to enjoy. Such a program has its hits and its misses. Yesterday I walked the entire Ringstrasse, one of the world’s great boulevards. I timed it so that I ate an early lunch at one of the restaurants in the Michelin guidebook, one especially chosen for its discounted lunch prices. This is, after all, not the first time I have visited Europe. It was a lovely meal with myriad subtle flavors (rhubarb blueberry lemonade anyone?), a craft saison with elderberry with an unexpected dry taste given its sweet/sour smell, and a waitress that started in German each time she visited my table. My German is much better than my French, but it is nowhere near as good as my Spanish and I am unable to speak in complete or even coherent sentences on most subjects. That she kept speaking to me in German was more a reflection on my appearance than anything else, something I have come to expect in this part of the world. Lunch also ended up being cheaper than my rushed dinner that was of much lower quality. As I said, hits and misses.

I visited the Belvedere Museum on Sunday and despite watching a well-written YouTube video about the significance of Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” did not find myself moved by it in the same way as I do when I stand before the Impressionist masterpieces. There was a quirky bit that ties into the conference from last week as the museum has minted NFTs of portions of its most famous painting, almost as if each dot in a pointillist work were being sold individually. We are still in the earliest stages of NFTs and it is still a technology searching for meaningful use cases, but the advent of these “overpriced JPEGs” has already altered the economic fundamentals of the art world at every level.

Today I visited the Albertina Museum. It is more my style with its Monets, Picassos, and even a few drawings by Michelangelo, but there was one exhibition that only made me uneasy. Most of its works were scenes from a psych ward—no people, just cold furniture, walls, and doors. The artist had himself suffered a mental breakdown and his time in a psych hospital was his inspiration for the series. I wish he’d found a different muse, but at least that was the first exhibition I visited and so the better parts of the visit came afterwards to chase away the ickiness.

I am working from a table at a Viennese café editing this. I considered a coworking space but opted against it given that this is Vienna, a city famous for its cafés. I don’t drink coffee or tea and much of the romance is lost as I sit working at my computer and not reading a newspaper, editing a manuscript, or having some philosophical conversation. Still, I am doing it. It is unlikely to help me make any new acquaintances, but it is a gesture in that direction. Finding comrades, that difficult task under any circumstances, may prove the most difficult part of a digital nomad lifestyle.

It was my birthday on Monday. The amount of change in my life over the last year has been greater than at any point in my adulthood. I am a corporate lawyer now with a growing M&A practice and a few startup clients that have me immersing myself in emerging technologies. I live in a new city. I have a job that lets me work from anywhere. I’m finally putting that flexibility to work.

I’m actually sitting in a conference room in Paris writing this. The past few days have been the beginning of a multi-part experiment. We arrived in Paris on Sunday evening. Monday and Tuesday were spent with a different schedule. I spent the morning and early afternoon both days exploring the city—revisiting Musée D’Orsay, walking through the Luxembourg Gardens, getting sticker shock at Galleries Lafayette, etc.—all before the workday began in Eastern time. The methods of travel have been metro and walking, two modes I have used at many times and in many places in my prior travels. It has been refreshing to return to this comfort zone after an interlude of something like two and a half years. My utter lack of French has not helped, but sight “reading” is possible with the language so I have mimed and pointed my way through the necessary interactions.

My culinary experiences have been mixed with both meals that have me contemplating taking some classes to learn to prepare some of the basic sauces that form the backbone of French cuisine and meals that have me wondering whether something got lost in translation when the menu was converted into English. I have not returned to the Louvre, and probably won’t on this trip, but I was frustrated that the Musée de l’Orangerie was closed yesterday (why Musée D’Orsay is closed on one day and Musée de l’Orangerie is closed on another is beyond me, especially when you can buy a single ticket to visit both).

Work has still gone on, but in the later afternoon through to almost midnight to accommodate meetings with people on the West Coast. This part of the experiment will continue for the next few weeks and there will probably be some variation in the work schedule to better calibrate it, but these posts will more likely cover the things I get into outside of work as I live in work in a few other European cities.

We were in Miami for a few days. It was warmer than the last time I was there and more humid too, but it wasn’t unbearable just yet. That said, I would rather not return again until at least what is the late fall here in North Carolina. It was Bill’s first visit to Florida, and I’ll just say that I’m glad Miami was not my first experience in the state. He only saw some of the showier parts of the city (though I made it clear I had no interest in going over to Miami Beach on this trip so he didn’t get to experience the chaos of South Beach). The choice of hotel and location of the conferences we attended dictated this, but I was okay with him not developing a strong desire to return soon given my attitude toward the summer in South Florida. Then I spent a contrasting, pleasant Sunday with my brother and sister-in-law in quieter sections of the city and ended my time in Miami with an arepa at a restaurant where the staff didn’t even pretend to speak English and a brisk walk through the airport terminal to get straight onto my return flight.

As our visit centered around attending conferences (this was ostensibly a business trip after all), there was a lot taking place. That commotion was why we were there, to expose ourselves to as many new ideas, developments, and projects as possible in a short period of time. There was a lot of silliness too, but those things weren’t overbearing and we were able to filter them out of our sensory intake.

Some of what we encountered validated a thesis that has been developing in my mind for several months. The particular strategies I will deploy to implement it are still to be determined, but at least now I have a destination and can chart a course to arrive there. What was even more exciting, though, was what we found missing. Sure, these were not the largest conferences dedicated to this growing field, but much of what we saw represented cutting-edge developments. We have been hearing about one of the next big things deploying these technologies for some time now but the current iterations are wanting, and this got our mental gears turning. Perhaps nothing will come from these ruminations, but we have decided to further explore some possibilities.

To sum up the experience, it was a testament to the value of exposing myself to new ideas and the latest developments in a growing field and to the value of resting and grounding myself with family. It was a nice change from the heads-down, build-the-business ethos that has been (and will remain) mine at least until we have a stable foundation under our feet through our legal practice.

Colors are changing on my afternoon walks. Where it was brown for several months, green is now showing in the undergrowth and there are already dogwoods with their white and pale pink flowers and rosebuds in bloom. I have been walking sans headphones for a few weeks now to bask in the birdsong and sunshine. One of my regular routes even takes me past a bald eagle nest. It isn’t clear whether there are chicks this year, but the contrast between the white heads and the pine tree in which their nest is perched makes for the sort of picture that attracts people with massive telescopic lenses who stand there for some time waiting for the birds to move. I have never been such a dedicated photographer, especially of birds, but I walk the path regularly enough to recognize most of those who lug the massive lenses around so I know they are committed to getting those photos. There are also blue heron, geese, squirrels, and whitetail deer on the walk almost every time, but the eagles are the real draw.

Spring has always been my favorite season. My birthday is in April, spring turkey hunting is immensely fun (and sometimes frustrating), baseball season begins, and the days grow longer so that I have more daylight in which to walk. There is always a tinge to spring, though, and it is perhaps more bittersweet than usual this year. Flowers are always bittersweet, beautiful as they may be but lasting for only a short time. Aaron Watson has a poignant song about just that in specific reference to the bluebonnets of the Texas hill country. Business is ticking up and life feels more possible here as the days get warmer, yet I will be spending most of the next couple months elsewhere. Not that I’m complaining—my upcoming travels are all by choice and that is the sweetness intermixed with the bitter. If you have an hour, take the chance to get outside and leave your phone behind. A little forest therapy (a phrase borrowed from the Japanese) can go a long way towards helping one’s state of mind.

I gave a speech last Friday. It wasn’t a business presentation, though we have more than one of those scheduled in the coming weeks. This was personal. I felt little in the way of nerves; I overcame most of my fear of public speaking long ago. Besides, while the speech was given to a room full of people the real audience consisted of only two.

Unlike others who spoke and read bullet points off their phones, I wrote out my remarks. I used the paragraphs in the way others used bullet points, glancing down at them instead of reading them. Still the exercise of writing out my thoughts, seeing them on the screen, changing their order, and editing them down was a helpful one. The writing process is the way I hone my thoughts.

Preparing the text involved a memory exercise in which I rarely indulge. I spend so much time looking forward that I can struggle to live in the present. I have worked on this and continue to do so, but this speech was more an exercise in reflecting on some of the best parts of my past. I scoured back through some of my earliest memories, walked through years of childhood ball games, and reminisced on a few long walks in some of the most beautiful places on earth.

I don’t know how well I communicated what I wanted to get across. Only my audience could answer that and I haven’t spoken with them about it yet. I wish I had done better, had refined the words more, had made more eye contact, had varied my intonation more, all of those things. I would wish those things no matter the outcome—that is the perfectionist in me. In any event, it was a wonderful weekend spent celebrating two wonderful people. I may have needed galoshes instead of dress shoes, but my clothes were rented so that is no longer my problem.

I had a long drive yesterday, a six-hour drive that became a seven-hour drive with the aid of a well-placed soon-to-be construction zone in South Carolina. I don’t love road trips and never have, but this one was made better through the power of storytelling. As I have written in these posts more than once already, I am an avid podcast listener. A few weeks ago, a new podcast dropped from one of my favorite shows—Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. The shows do not come out at a regular cadence but the episodes are mammoth when they are released. This one is over five and a half hours long at 1x speed, though in the car I listen at 1.3x.

Dan Carlin describes himself as an amateur historian. He reads a large number of sources on a given topic and pieces together his own narrative out of the events, caveating at every step that he is not qualified to make historical judgments and heavily quoting both primary and secondary sources so the episodes remain grounded. His constant self-effacement is equal parts endearing and distracting, but I was a history major myself and I enjoy listening to him quote primary sources from decades or even centuries past as the differences in language help me empathize with the protagonists. He doesn’t shy away from the macabre and this episode about the Atlantic slave trade is no exception. Yes, he wades into a topic that is untouchable for many in our current political climate, but he never veers into contemporary politics. Given the length of the episode, he has the scope to approach the narrative from multiple perspectives at each phase of the chronology and he does so in a way that can have you disagreeing with yourself as different, sometimes contrasting ideas are presented in quick succession. He has done the same for other topics too, and if you have a long road trip this summer without kids in the car I encourage you to download an episode and give it a try.

Will listening to the episode compel me to do a deep dive into the Haitian revolution after listening to some stories about the horrors it wrought? Probably not, but even so I now have at least a basic understanding of a few of the major themes. While that may be just enough knowledge to be dangerous, it is only such if one forgoes all intellectual humility in the manner of cable news prognosticators. This high-level overview style is one of the things I enjoy so much about podcasts. Yes, I have listened to podcast series that go into much greater detail (here’s looking at you, History of Rome), but many of my favorites give a glimpse into an idea, a perspective, a place. If I want to go deeper, then all I need do is visit the show notes and explore the sources cited and resources listed there. If I don’t, then I can move onto the next topic—podcasts make up one big intellectual buffet.

On Thursday, I attended a public lecture presented by Dr. Jordan Peterson. In his lectures, ostensibly billed as a book tour, Dr. Peterson takes one of the rules from his two most recent books as his starting point and launches off from there. The chosen rule for this lecture was “Make one room in your house as beautiful as possible,” the same rule I reflected upon several months ago using this same medium. The introductory remarks offered by his wife hewed much closer to the topic as she addressed her experiences remodeling parts of their homes, but I expected that based on the length of his talk. His remarks were more abstract, generalizing to the level of art itself as a glimpse towards the possibility of better, even the existence of better. In this way, bringing art or beautiful things more generally into your living space is a way of reminding yourself that you can be better and that life can too. It was heady stuff, but I found myself able to follow throughout and everyone around me rapt until about the hour mark, at which point a few people started fidgeting and he circled back to his main points and concluded.

Once the lecture concluded, there was a brief interlude and the couple returned, she reading questions from a laptop and he providing responses. The questions were not trifling and the responses were more reflections than answers, but what struck me most during the Q&A were his pauses. After each question was read, he took a few seconds to collect his thoughts before speaking. The effect was to add gravitas to each of the responses. It suggested intellectual honesty and simultaneous respect for the questioner. I am unsure how well it will translate to the virtual meeting setting in which I so often find myself, but I do plan to try to pause an extra second before answering certain questions to see how it impacts the quality of my communication.