Category: Newsletter (Page 15 of 23)

I don’t eat out much, maybe three or four meals a week total. In every place I’ve lived I have had a stable of restaurants that I patronize, usually no more than three or four core restaurants and then a second tier for cravings for a particular type of food or a place to go when I have visitors. Every few weeks, though, I eat at some new place. Maybe I walked or drove past it and was curious. Maybe someone told me about it. Maybe I did a search on Google Maps and it appeared in the results. This practice is a small way of continuing to expand my horizons even while remaining within my established comfort zone much of the time.

I have made two such visits in the last three weeks, both bolstered by the presence of family members to provide conversation through the meals. These two experiences offered typical results. The first place had very good food. It was a tad on the expensive side (seafood almost always is) and got loud as it filled up, but it was the sort of place that I may revisit for a late lunch or an early dinner. It doesn’t crack my core rotation, but it will find a place in the second tier. The second place, though, will not. It was a Sunday night so the place was quiet. The drink I had was very good and others enjoyed theirs also. But the food just wasn’t good enough. I ordered shrimp and grits, a Southern standard if ever there were one. That dish hardly even compared to the shrimp and grits I had at more than one restaurant in Charleston back in the fall, so that is that. It may be harsh, but new restaurants rarely get more than one audition for me. There are simply too many of them to try.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been rewatching the television series The Newsroom. There is a certain irony in me watching a show set against the backdrop of a nightly news program given how I steadfastly avoid those very broadcasts, but I wanted to watch a complete series and haven’t found any new ones that have piqued my interest recently. The show is about a fictionalized newsman and his team who take a Don Quixote like approach (if I may be permitted a reference to a work I haven’t read) and stand against the absurdities of the news cycle during the time I was in college. As many knew then and as we certainly know now, that was a losing battle. Media is in the attention business, viewers are the product, and the algorithms are improving every day.

I haven’t rewatched the show to relive the time period in which it is set or gloat over the death of old media. I’ve watched for the psychology of the characters. More than the specific events being covered and more than the interwoven romantic relationships between the protagonists, the show is about the struggles of people trying to live up to their own principles. They face public ridicule and economic consequences for trying to live out those principles. They struggle with self-loathing when they compromise on or fail to meet those principles. They are riddled with self-doubt at every step. And yet, despite all of that, they persist. Even knowing that it is all tilting at windmills, they persist. To be true to themselves, they have no other choice. In the circumstances I’m facing, I’ve found this fictionalized example edifying.

Last week I wrote about the concept of conducting a year-end review instead of making a new year’s resolution. I did a truncated version of the exercise relative to what I did at the beginning of 2022. One of the biggest things I saw was that I progressively became better at batching meetings and protecting periods of several hours in which do make real progress on work projects through most of the year but then began to let things slip. There were too many days in November and December that were chopped up by meetings over which I had some control, so I’m going to work to rein those back to minimize the stop-start nature of those days. After all, I am my own boss.

I also did quite a bit of traveling last year, but when I conducted my review I saw a marked difference in my enjoyment based on whether I was traveling alone or with a group of family or friends. I’ll try to take that lesson to heart in 2023, starting perhaps as soon as this weekend if things work out how I hope they will.

I haven’t set upon any mini goals yet, so it appears that January won’t get a self-improvement project this year. That may even be better since I’ll be starting a project well after most people will have given up on theirs. I hope that if you did set a new year’s resolution you are still on course. And if you have already fallen off the wagon, get back on it—there’s still time.

2022 has been a year full of twists and turns for me in my personal and professional lives and there is every indication that next year will only accelerate that pattern. I’ve had a lot of windshield miles over the past two weeks to reflect on some of those turns and my head is still spinning. I’ve closed dozens of transactions this year, worked from five countries, and worked in what feels like most of the world’s time zones. And that’s just in my work life.

I’m not one to set resolutions at the new year. Those only result in frustration and disappointment so I don’t make them. Besides, where I am now is a very different place than where I thought I’d be at this time when I thought about things this January. I don’t want to discourage anyone from making new year’s resolutions. They’ve just never done much for me.

I will do some version of a year-end inventory instead. I’ll look back at the things I most and least enjoyed this year and think about how to maximize and minimize those activities in the year to come. I find that a more productive exercise. I’ll also take the opportunity to discard a number of things, an early spring cleaning. If you’ve never gotten much traction from new year’s resolutions either, maybe you too would benefit from a year-end inventory so that you can be intentional about bringing more joy into your life in 2023. If I have a resolution for my own life, surely that is it.

Immediately following our family Christmas meal, our family sings an out-of-tune rendition of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” We have done so for over two decades now. It was my grandfather’s favorite Christmas song. He never sang it well either, but he did always sing it loudly. That song is a small way he can still be with us even after all these years.

The song is followed by an advent service organized by my mother. She always puts a great deal of effort preparing it, and we appreciate that effort even if we don’t always show it contemporaneously. Then we follow with pieces of strawberry cake (strawberry because I don’t eat chocolate) for dessert. It is one of the only times during the year when I eat cake at all actually. And then we unwrap presents, a much more staid time than it must have been when my brother and I were children. Nothing quite matches the excitement of children when it is time to open presents. I won’t get to witness that this year, but maybe I’ll be able to see some of my favorite little ones shortly thereafter depending on how the weather plays out.

I’m sure each of you who celebrate Christmas has similar traditions of your own. You may even be able to form new traditions this year if life has brought you changes in the past twelve months. As you celebrate, take a moment to appreciate those little traditions. They help keep continuity in life even in the face of incessant change.

I’m (in)famous in my family for buying Christmas gifts at the last minute. It’s become so much of a trope that I almost feel obligated to leave a little shopping until the end just so there can be familiar conversation every year. At least I tell myself that to boost my own spirits; I doubt it has much credence with anyone else. We also celebrate Christmas a week early to simplify logistics, meaning I have even less time in which to purchase gifts. In comparison with most years, I have already made tremendous progress—I am only one-and-a-half gifts short of being finished. That said, the remainder of my purchases will be James David specials as we are past any shipping deadline and I am working on a lot of different things simultaneously.

I take a modicum of pride in the gifts I give, though. In recent years, they have become much more tailored to the recipients. I will never be a gift-giving wizard, but the act of wracking my brain to generate ideas helps me appreciate the people to whom I’m giving the gifts. That may be odd, but for me it’s true. As the rest of you conclude your Christmas shopping, I hope that you experience something similar.

We have always worked in multiple time zones at Barlow & Williams, but there has been an extended project for one of our west coast clients that has taken our nascent firm into uncharted territory in regard to scheduling. It has given me flashbacks to one of the worst elements of my time working at a big law firm, working full workdays in multiple time zones. When I was at the big firm, this meant working all day on tasks for partners based in New York and then at night and in the early morning for partners based in Los Angeles who just assumed that whatever task they sent me would be completed by their morning since I was three hours ahead. It created a dynamic captured by the cliché of burning a candle at both ends. Eventually, I decided enough was enough and I embarked on the path that led me to the crazy professional life I have now.

These few weeks have not been as bad as that period. There have been world cup matches to watch during any afternoon lull (at least part of the matches, anyway) and there have only been a couple of late, late nights. Some of the angst is probably the result of working from home. I only leave my building to go to the gym or to go for a walk, and with daylight hours decreasing it has felt stifling on some days. That is going to change, though, as I’ll be traveling next week for an early family Christmas celebration. For now, I’ll just white knuckle through it and wait for the completion of the end-of-year rush.

I spent the Thanksgiving holiday with my immediate family near the beach—no sand for me but there were several walks in the salt air when it wasn’t raining. I did what I could to take a few days away from the computer. I didn’t quite succeed in that endeavor, but things were slow with work as counterparties were all offline. It was a time of reflection of how much the lives of almost everyone in the family have changed over the past year. While I may be living in the same place as I was a year ago, my work is different and more fruitful than what I expected. As my work continues to evolve, where I am this time next year could be just as different from where I am now (crazy as that possibility sounds given just how much has changed this year). For those who follow this chronicle closely, this will read like a repeat of last week’s missive. In many ways it is, aided by the extra time for contemplation during some long drives to the coast and back.

After the last few months, this week has been calm. That even includes my six-hour drive yesterday in an attempt to beat some of the holiday traffic going into the Thanksgiving weekend. The attempt was not as successful as I’d hoped, but my walk this morning was down to the pier, past the lighthouse, and through the live oaks instead of on the city streets in my Raleigh neighborhood.

On a broader level, this is a time of anticipation and building. There are a lot of things in development but none have yet borne fruit. I’ve had to force myself to zoom out and contemplate things on a timescale of months and quarters instead of days and weeks, and this has been frustrating given the rapid growth the business through most of this year. I’m sure many of you will have experienced similar times in your own lives. Now to keep my head down and keep moving forward through the rest of this period.

Last week offered a stark change from New York City. I spent a few days in east Tennessee surrounded by open space and very few people. There was still plenty of noise at times but noise of very different sorts than car horns and ambulance sirens.

The trip started with a multiday quail shoot on a preserve located on a bend in the Tennessee River. The hunts themselves involved walking through fields behind two dogs, a pointer and a flusher. To watch a bird dog in action is to see an animal in a state of absolute joy and it is a show just to watch it work the fields. The dogs worked in tandem. The pointer would run back and forth until it picked up a scent and pointed towards a covey of birds. Then the group would catch up to the pointer and the flusher would be released to flush the quail up into the air. The addition of the flushing dog made this hunt much less tiring than last year’s iteration where I was the one who had to kick about in the grass to get the birds to fly. The flushing dogs were also great retrievers and we didn’t lose a single bird during any of the three sessions. Dad did, however, shoot a few at such close range that there wasn’t much left to retrieve.

I then spent a couple of days with cousins and an aunt and uncle. Or more specifically, I stayed a few days with the three youngest members of the family and everyone else who happened to be with them while I was there. I hadn’t seen the kids in six months or more and they just keep growing, especially the youngest who was only a few weeks old when I saw him last. I don’t get to be around the children as much as I’d like, but I do enjoy how small their worlds are and how their worries are over toys and books and puzzles and combing their hair. I doubt I’ll ever be able to get that back. The oldest is now in first grade and has so many questions about so many things, especially Spanish translations this time, and her younger sister soaks in what information she can from listening.  It is refreshing to just sit and answer their little questions.