Some random thoughts

Are you lucky? I think so.

Today I met with an associate (who happens to be a good friend and colleague of BT) who shared a snippet from her life that made me think, "wow you are lucky." Mind you, she is a first year associate at Gigantic Firm of Whitey, Whitey and Whitey. I know what her life will entail in a few short months. However, she is married to a wonderful guy who has a flexible job/schedule. They've been lucky enough to have a son. And most of all, as she said, "we have family dinner every single night, no matter what. We started doing that before I started being a lawyer and before we had our son and I will try my hardest to continue to do so now."

Wow. In large-firm-lawyer-land, she'd be lucky if this continued through the end of the year. In regular 40-hour a week job-land, she'd by lucky if this worked out more than a couple years before the next big promotion. In married-to-a-pilot land this is an impossibility. An unattainable wish, particularly if the pilot commutes to his base. So kudos to everyone and anyone who has this capability. As much as it's a pain in the ass to plan a meal and make dinner every night, the ability to feed to people you love, to have time every single night together, and to fall asleep in the same house/state/time zone, is quite a blessing that I think most folks take for granted.

Don't feel bad if you do. It's true that you never know what you've got unless you don't have that particular thing anymore (not like you lost it necessarily, you just don't have it). But hopefully at least once in awhile you do realize how lucky you are.

All forms of communication are not created equally

On another note, I have recently been making a concerted effort to be more communicative. For the last 4 or 5 months, I've basically shunned the phone. Which is very wierd considering I LIVED to talk on the phone as a teenager and used it as a lifeline to home & friends during law school and the bar. But now I talk for a living. On average 4-5 hours a day, during a busy week up to 7-8 hours a day. That's no joke. So, to be quite honest, the last thing I want to (or physically can on some days) do at night during my downtime is talk on the phone. Unfortunately, my shunning the phone has also made my closest friends (and likely my family) feel like I've shunned them. Without knowingly doing so, I left a friend without support, without a lifeline, during a very difficult period in her life. And I feel awful about it... so I'm making an effort to be more communicative on the phone. I'm great at email, great for meeting for lunch/dinner/drinks, pretty good at texting..... but I suck at making and returning calls.

If you have ever been on the recieving end of my abstentia from the phone, please know that it's not personal. It never was. It's just me. And I'm sorry, I really really am.