(And I am self-aware enough to know that my in-person conversations are often one-sided with me being the storytelling bully…but I am working on bring a better listener.)
What you may not know, unless you’ve known me for a very long time is that I am prone to internalizing my anxieties, tamping them down deep, and obsessing privately over them. This condition manifests itself as procrastination and peevishness, a real weight in the center of my chest belaboring my breathing, and an overwhelming desire to just flee my problems.
It’s not depression, as far as I can tell. As soon as the underlying cause of my anxiety passes, so do the symptoms. It’s more like a slowly simmering panic attack, one that I manage by just pressing forward, knowing that whatever it is that is triggering me will eventually resolve itself because nothing lasts forever, right?
It is ironic that I chose to be a lawyer, because the profession is nothing if it is not taking on other people’s problems as if they are your own, and worrying about the worst possible outcome. I spent 27 years representing my friends at the DA’s office and it was my job to keep that worst possible outcome from happening to them.
Most of the time, the conflicts were manageable, just professional disputes with ethical adversaries, ultimately leading to a reasonable result. But it seemed like there was always that one case where the adversary was irrationally angry and unreasonable, where he or she would take everything too personally, and their anger would extend from my client to me.
Even as I write this, I can remember these people and how they got under my skin with a practiced and amoral efficiency. The public information requestor seeking tens of thousands of documents to get even with the office’s refusal to accept a charge against the requestor’s enemy; the plaintiffs’ lawyer sending over gigantic amounts of discovery on a patently frivolous case; a variety of slash and burn attorneys pursuing a strategy of winning by attrition. Everything was too personal, way too personal.
What got me through these hard cases was the love and support of my colleagues at the office, who I think could see the toll those cases took on me and did what they could to help, sometimes carrying the ball when I could not lift my head off the desk.
I was also buoyed by a fundamental belief that the law was on my side and that I would eventually get the result that the law supported. I really was (and am) a true believer that good lawyering leads to just results. It just might take longer than you’d like it to.
And finally, I drew on a core strength from a childhood in which some things were not easy, but I had been forced by my parents to persevere. You want a car? Earn it. We signed you up to be a reader at Mass. Go do it. Want to be on the swim team? The pool awaits, every morning at 6 a.m. Want to convince your mother to ease up on her anger towards you? Put on your poker face and just keep going.
When I retired, I thought I left those anxiety triggers behind. I can pick my projects, screen out the hard stuff, work on my own schedule.
But the case I was handling this month was a blast from the past, a bundle of irrational arguments made by an amoral murderer (literally!), high stakes litigation against a jailhouse lawyer. I am going to win as long as I don’t screw it up. But if I screw it up, embarrassment and a parade of horribles could ensue.
No parking ticket, this.
So I have been anxious and sleepless and consumed with dread as I march to the conclusion. And today was supposed to be the end - I’d written a fifty page brief and another fifty page draft order for the judge to sign. It was finally done.
Until I got a phone call from the clerk telling me that my adversary had filed three new claims. I sat down and looked off in the distance, contemplating my fate. More briefing, more time worrying.
And then I gathered myself and waited to see what he had written. And it was nothing, nothing at all. I did some quick research, knocked down the arguments, amended my brief and draft order to address the new claims, and filed the bitch.
Done.
I then came downstairs from my office and made a Sidecar - lemon juice, brandy, Cointreau - a great drink and a happy celebration. And a new resolution to avoid these cases like the soul-sucking hairballs they are. I’m 62 and I want to make it to 92. Or 102. But I won’t if I keep doing this to myself.
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Since last checking in, besides the hairball case, there’s not much to report on. Some good meals - Killen’s BBQ Sunday fried chicken yesterday, a chef’s tasting at Amalfi on Westheimer on Saturday, some excellent fajitas on Friday with the family - and more swimming in May than I probably did in all of 2025.
The bubby is a big part of that: he is getting more and more comfortable in the water and loves to throw the basketball we use in the pool. He is getting very verbal, but everything besides “doggie” and “ball” is still gibberish, at least to me. But he is getting closer to becoming much more interesting.
Today, I also pickled my crop of banana peppers in a solution of apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds and fennel seeds. They are curing for a day, and then I will try them in a ham sandwich.
Tomorrow: dealing with the aftermath of my filing, some exercise, a stop at Home Depot for a large pot to transplant one of my tomato plants into (it’s almost ready to explode with fruit, but its pot is way too small), and then preparation for a speech I will be giving next week at the Annual Meeting of the State Bar. I think it will be an easy speech, as long as I don’t freak out in my old age over the size of the audience and the topic (Transitioning Your Law Practice).
(Thinks.)
Have I learned nothing? No more speeches after this one. Geez.
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