Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 3)

I was more or less unable to work on Monday and Tuesday this week, and not because I’m on vacation. I’ll be fine and things are under control, but it’s not been a great start to the week. People have been understanding when I’ve needed to cancel meetings, but I must admit to a gnawing sense of anticipation and anxiety as more and more things have piled up. I’ll start chipping away at them as soon as I finish writing this short post, but my to-do list is currently sitting at 24 items. It’s called a focus list in the software tool we use, but nothing with 24 things on it as a focus list. Oh well. This is one of the times when it’s great to have an assistant team I trust and to be in a partnership instead of being a solo practitioner. For the couple of items that have been most pressing, my partner has stepped in. I’ve done the same for him. As for any current clients reading this, I appreciate you bearing with me.

Last week, my parents visited. There wasn’t a particular reason for the visit, but they’re retired and so can travel when they wish. While it was still a normal workweek for me, I made sure to schedule some nicer dinners while they were here.

For the first, we went to a French bistro in Chapel Hill. This marked my third visit to that restaurant, and I’ve yet to walk away disappointed. I also get the same main dish every time, so maybe that has something to do with it. And not that anyone’s asking, but I have varied the other aspects of the meal. On my two prior visits, I dined alone. This time not only was I joined by my parents but also by a gentleman who lives locally, shares a connection with the town where I grew up, and with whom we’ve gone on multiple trips through the years. The time flew in easy conversation and the meal was delightful again.

For the second, we went to a steakhouse in downtown Durham. This is not just any steakhouse either, but the one connected with the theater where it is normally impossible to get a reservation before 8:30. For whatever reason, though, there wasn’t a performance that evening so I was able to reserve a table in the 6:30 slot with the few weeks’ notice that I had. Dad and I split one of the steak specials and Mom got her own so that hers would be cooked more to her liking. We did not order French fries like some of the other tables did, and that may have been a missed trick as the quantity of fries was impressive. The Brussels sprouts were good though. In truth, everything about the meal was very good in the way a classic steakhouse should be, most of all the beef.

I normally eat out for only dinner per week, and this week that number might be zero if the weather forecast proves accurate, but it was nice to double dip last week. It’s also always nice when I can add a positive review to my restaurant spreadsheet.

During this month when so many choose not to partake of any alcohol in Dry January, I’ll reflect on my own chosen abstinence. I didn’t turn on my television in December. It just sat upon its table in my living room, blocking the fireplace that I’ll never use. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this with the television. I’ve done it a couple of times in the past, every time with the same goal of a reset when I’ve felt too many hours slipping away. It’s not that I went the month without screens or without video; there were still plenty of hours spent on Zoom and typing away. But I did opt for other things in my hours of recreation.

I have watched a couple of things so far in January. This began with the first movie in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I watched once I completed that portion of the book. I’ll do the same with the other two movies as I progress, but it will be at least another week before I start watching the second movie. I’ve also watched a few other things, but my default has been to read in the evening instead of watching something on Netflix. It helps that I’ve been uninterested in watching football this season given just how awful the Titans were, but it might have helped even more that December saw its normal spike in the quantity of work I needed to get through.

Those caveats aside, though, I don’t feel as if I missed much and it’s not like I’ve had a tremendous desire to binge watch something now that the television is an option again. I expect it will stay that way for a while at least, and having the television be something that I only do on occasion makes it more of an event. It will also make me even less tolerant of filler content since I won’t want to waste the little time I devote to watching things. Has anyone else done a similar experiment? Or perhaps taken things even further and done away with their television entirely? If you have, I’m curious what results you saw.

Last night, I took my third visit to the theater this season to see a Broadway show. Unless I decide to spring for a ticket to Hamilton or otherwise decide to watch something else, it will be my last trip to DPAC for a while.

This show was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, nostalgia bait for my generation. And fair enough, I read the series twice and am familiar enough with the story that I listened to and read much of the first book in Spanish as I made a concerted effort to improve in that language. There were plenty of children wearing Gryffindor attire. There were plenty of adults wearing Gryffindor attire too. There were not as many people wearing colors of the other houses, but there were a few who acknowledged openly that the Sorting Hat would have placed them in Slytherin. I didn’t have it on my 2026 bingo card that I would hear a gentleman of about sixty tell his wife to be careful with her wand as they made their way to their seats, much less that statement would be literal and that both of them were carrying wands to go along with their wizarding robes. Not that I had a problem with any of this, but I would have had I gotten poked in the head.

Since I expected that the production value and special effects would be such a large part of the entertainment on offer, I decided that this show would be my first foray into the lowest level of seating in the triple-deck venue. I don’t know that I’ll want to be where I was at every show, but it certainly made this one better. The flames, sparks, smoke, and swooping people filled up more of my field of vision and the sound effects were more visceral being closer to the speakers. It really added to the spectacle. I won’t dwell on the plot at all as I have a no-spoilers policy, but I splurged on dinner beforehand too. Steak frites at a French bistro downtown. It was very good, though on balance I wish I hadn’t ordered any dessert as it didn’t uphold the same standard. I was also several years younger than any of the other patrons and the wait staff seemed a little confused as to why I was there at all. Had I told them that I was going to the theater, I expect it would have made much more sense to them. Regardless, it was nice to have an evening of activities that I chose at the start of this new year.

New Year’s resolutions aren’t my thing. I prefer to reflect on what actually happened over the previous year and go from there. Once the craziness that is the end of the year for an M&A legal practice subsides, I’ll sit down and take some time to review this year. I’ll look at my work hours, meeting allocations, conferences, etc. and reflect on what worked, what didn’t work, and what should be tweaked. As a simple example, we went to a lot of conferences this year. We’ll cut over half of that volume next year. I’ll look at my social/recreational activities and conduct a similar exercise. I’ll also spend some time thinking about things I’d like to do more in 2026.

One thing I have enjoyed in the last few months is more regularly scheduled dinners at restaurants. I cook most of my meals, but I’ve been trying a new place on either Friday or Saturday most weeks. I won’t visit several of them again, but others are options. Most of these dinners have been solo trips (I got over any trepidation about eating alone long ago), but having more group dinners is one of my priorities in the new year after the reflection that I’ve already begun.

I’m also planning my winter 2026 trip. This year, I spent a few weeks in Morocco and worked very little while I was away. Next year, I’m looking at more of a work-from-somewhere-else trip than one where I’d completely unplug. That is the difference a year makes. We’ve made a lot of process improvements this year, but there are still major strides to make next year as we continue to ramp up efficiency as our business continues to grow. Also, it’s been a couple of years since either of us took a working residence trip like this and I’m curious about the viability of such a trip currently. My hope is that this will be successful and that I’ll take another more ambitious trip later in the year along similar lines.

I visited with a good friend on Sunday. It had been too long since we’d gotten together, which is almost entirely my fault since I’m not the one with a newborn. I sent a text in the morning asking if he’d be home and made the visit in the mid-afternoon.

At one point in the conversation my friend suggested that he’d expected me to tell him I’d be moving in the new year. That was a stinging indictment, and I don’t have current plans to relocate (though in fairness to him I did leave Raleigh on January 1 a few years ago to mark an end to that chapter of my life). Instead, I just wanted to spend some time with him. That was my only agenda item. It was refreshing. We sat in the living room for about an hour and talked while the baby slept. Then I took my normal Sunday walk on the American Tobacco Trail before sunset and a nice dinner of home-cooked, farm-raised lamb chops that I’d brought from Kentucky when I visited for Thanksgiving. It was one of the better Sundays I’ve had in a while.

So if this can serve as a note, take the opportunity this Christmas season to reach out to the friend you haven’t talked to in too long. The small effort will be good for both of your souls.

I’m not one to dress up for Halloween. I haven’t in over two decades. But I do enjoy seeing children giddy with all of the sugary goodness they collect in their baskets. Even in my teenage years, my favorite part of Halloween was sitting on the porch and interacting with all of the children who came by our house to get candy. As my house was in one of those neighborhoods where people came from miles around to get the best candy, there were always a lot of children. I also grew up in a small town so I knew most of them.

With the exception of a single year back in the house where I grew up when I was clerking, I’ve lived in dorms or apartments for about fifteen years now. But that changed a few months ago when I moved into a house. And this is a house in a leafy but still fairly dense area of cul-de-sacs. There are also plenty of children, both in the larger neighborhood and in my smaller section. So this was the first year I bought candy to have in order to be ready to give out.

Overall, it just didn’t happen. Sure I didn’t decorate the exterior the way some houses in the neighborhood did, but I had the light on and parked my car in such a way to make it easier to get to the door. I only had about four groups during the evening and a total of six children, one of whom was way too old to be trick-or-treating but was also alone so I just let that go without comment. Now I have most of a bag of skittles and starburst that I will try to pawn off on people during group meetings, but that is less of an issue than the tinge of loss I felt. I had hoped that this Halloween would be more like those from my youth, but it wasn’t to be.

Last week I took my second trip to Las Vegas this year. Vegas is hardly my favorite city in the world, but at least this conference was better than my April trip that produced exactly zero results. I actually stayed just a couple of blocks down the strip from where we stayed for the first trip this year, but I did not have to walk through as many casinos this time as this event was hosted at a hotel that isn’t directly connected with a casino.

This conference was the Rhodium Summit and this year marked my fourth time attending. It is a conference for people who run digital businesses, making me something of an outlier as the only attorney in the group but I roughly fit in with the others who run agencies. It is a very different atmosphere than other conferences. For one thing, if you try to sell things to the other attendees then you won’t get invited back. And I’ve been around long enough that I’ve seen it happen. Attendance was lighter this year as a lot of members have been battered by a combination of tariffs, AI upheaval, and the continuing whims of platform algorithms. That made this year’s summit more intimate than some have been, which brings some positives. This event is a chance for me to spend time with people I’ve worked with, have zoom calls with, or otherwise have known for a while and who have similar work experiences to what I have with a fully remote business. That is the true value of both the conference and the larger group for me, the community feeling that I just don’t get in my day-to-day.

There is also the opportunity for idea cross-pollination in speaking with people who are high level operators. The group also includes plenty of members who are very AI-forward so I can always pick up a few things from them. Some of those lessons are going to fill my work free time over the coming weeks. It does require some translation to take the ideas that are working in one business model and place them into my own context, but that’s part of the fun. A conference room full of attorneys talking about how to operate a law firm sounds like something lifted from Dante, and that coming from someone who is doing just that.

After two years living in downtown Durham, I decided it was time for a change. I was tired of people making noise above me and of being downtown generally. As a result, I conducted a targeted search for a house to rent in a particular neighborhood. I managed to find one that was available for rent due to its owners being relocated for work, did a walkthrough, and signed the lease in short order.

I took possession on Friday and delivered multiple carloads of things over the course of the weekend. I set aside Monday for the big move day with the heavier furniture. It turned into a longer day than I’d hoped. Traffic meant things got off to a late start. I’d forgotten how long the distance is between that apartment and the loading dock. It was into the afternoon by the time the truck arrived at the house and the stuff took another hour plus to unload. Due to my severe underestimation of how long things would take I had to reschedule multiple meetings, something I hate doing. The crew was professional and I don’t have any complaints about their level of service, but it is always disconcerting to see your things hauled by people who care infinitely less about damaging them than you do.

Once everything was finally in the house and roughly in the rooms where I wanted things, I ate a very late lunch and jumped into a few meetings to make sure nothing was on fire. Then I started adjusting some things, unpacking others, and working to make it so that I could use the kitchen as a kitchen instead of a storage room. As of the time of writing, not a single room is finished. It has been much more about minimum viable than optimal with respect to my new place thus far. That should finally change today, but only after another trip to a home goods store to pick up a few items. As for when the house will be decorated as I intend, that will not be until Saturday at the earliest. Even this morning, I woke up early to put together one of my beds. I’d forgotten just how time-consuming it is to set things up (and how much your fingers can hurt from twisting screws and using allen wrenches and the like). Typing is not the most pleasant feeling right now, but the show must go on. At least it is rainy today so I won’t be tempted to go for a walk and so will continue to chip away at my task list in setting up my new residence.

Today is the second day of the July administration of the bar examination, a test given twice per year at the same time in every state and the District of Columbia. It has been nine years since I sat through the marathon exam in a freezing convention center on the North Carolina state fairgrounds. I don’t have any memories of the contents of the test itself and have had little reason to reflect on the experience in the intervening years. I studied intensely for a few months for a pass/fail test and I passed. Onto the next thing.

This year, though, I’ve observed one of the members of my church small group go through his own preparations for the exam. He was one of two members of the group who finished law school this spring so I was also able to watch their final year of law school—it seemed more pleasant than mine with less acrimony and fewer protests. He went through a more regimented exam preparation course than I did so he spoke in terms of percentages as his studying progressed. He also took several more practice exams than I recall taking. In the final week before I took the test, I stayed in a writer’s cabin sort of place outside Boone to get away from things and be sure I’d be relaxed going into the mental marathon. He largely stayed at home for his preparation.

I asked for and received regular updates about his studying progress. It’s not that he needed any accountability from me; I just wanted to feel helpful. As the exam grew closer, I talked less about studying and more about logistics. Bring a jacket. Don’t run out of snacks. Those are the things that can move the needle after months of studying. Another quirk of the rule against perpetuities probably won’t. Yes, that rule is a real thing. No, I’ve not had to worry about it since the bar exam. And I can say the same about almost everything else I crammed into my brain that spring and early summer.