Thought of the Day 4/13/12

It's Friday the 13th. Did you know this year has four Friday the thirteenths?

From beyond the grave...

OK, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration. But, yes, I've been inactive posting here for a while. I got a new job back in March and I've been working some very long hours. I'm writing this as I prepare to scarf a Jimmy Dean D-Lights breakfast sandwich and some coffee on my way to court. Yes, I'm a lawyer.

And the one thing I've started to learn about this job is that, to be a lawyer, really, all you have to want is to be a lawyer. You can't really want to be anything else, because there is no time for it. So you'd better love what you do.

I don't know many people who feel that way about their work. And it makes me wonder what will happen during other phases of my life. My husband and I plan to have kids some day. Will I be able to be a lawyer at the same time? I'm not really sure. 

I'm still trying to maintain my writing aspirations, a little bit at a time. After spending all day at a computer, the last thing I want to do is sit down at one again to write, so I got a notebook and I'm just scribbling away before bed each night. It's actually been pleasant. 

But the one thing I've really done is made a decision. I'm currently working on my dream book. The One Idea that I've had since I was 14 years old, that I've been imagining and jotting things down about for years. 

It breaks my heart to say it, but I don't really have the time or energy to dedicate to my dream book right now. When I do it, I want to do it right (write?). 

But that's not going to stop me. I wrote another book a few years ago that I love. It was a crazy project for me - way out of my usual genre - and I loved every minute of writing it. It's been sitting on my hard drive since 2007, waiting patiently for me to finish editing. Yesterday, it made a huge demand. I was nonchalantly driving to work, thinking about motorcycle season, when WHAM. The title came to me. And, honestly, I love this title. 

Clearly, this book wants to get off of my hard drive. And, lawyer or not, I need to make that happen.

I wish I had some more fanfare or a cover to share or something like that. I'd like to sit on the title for a bit until I have something spiffy to go with it and give it the presentation it deserves. But the book itself is just fun. It's a chick lit. And it's about the softer side of motorcycles.

More to come soon!

Highs and lows

So, my last post was about the "constructive layoff" my law firm did on February 24th. Since then, life's been pretty hectic. I was trying to decide what to do as I went about my week and worried about my loss of income.

My week started with a general feeling of vacancy and failure. I went about business as usual, thinking that some kind of activity under the commission-only pay structure was better than nothing. I met with another attorney from my firm in the area and did a ride-along with him. I came home, did my own thing, and fretted about what to do. I went to networking events; instead of promoting my law firm, I let people know that I was an unemployed attorney looking for work.

By the end of the week, I was facing the inevitable: it was time to dip into my dwindling savings and start living off of that again until I either started making commission or found a new job. On Friday morning, I went to a networking event at the Chamber of Commerce of a nearby town. It was a good event, but I was fretting and stressed. When it was over, I checked my cell phone. One missed call, and a voicemail.

It was an attorney I had spoken with at a networking event earlier that week, and he wanted me to call him back ASAP. I obliged; his office was less than a mile away from where I was, and did I want to come in for an interview? Um, yes.

Long story short, I spent a grand total of 7 days on a commission-only pay structure - i.e. effectively unemployed. My new job starts Monday.

Good: I get to be a lawyer. I get to get paid. The commute is pretty good, and it's in the opposite direction of traffic.
Bad: We probably have to put our dog down.

He requires pretty much round-the-clock care due to his age; he can't walk, and he is on an incontinence bed. He cannot flip himself over or anything.

It's a mixed bag. I'm happy that I'm moving forward with my career, but it's always sad to lose a pet. Plus, I have no illusions about the kinds of hours I'll be working henceforth.

Something else that was a little unexpected is that I am sad to say goodbye to my (now former) boss. While working for that law firm was tough due to all of the uncertainty and pressure that goes with being part of a start-up, the one thing I will say about my old boss is that he was a kind person. He genuinely seemed to care about his team, and he wished me nothing but the best. That's not something that can be said often about people working in the legal industry. In fact, I rarely ever see it in general.

I wish circumstances had been different. If finances weren't a concern, I'd want to stay with that firm indefinitely, just because working for a kind person is important to me. Sadly, I have six figures of student loan debt to worry about. For now, I need some kind of steady income coming in while I build my empire.

Well. That's not too great.

I've been trying to focus on posting blog entries that have at least an iota of general interest lately, but there's really no getting around some recent events that are occupying my brain. In a nutshell, I've been constructively laid off by my law firm, and it's creating a pretty mixed bag of emotions.

Essentially, this is what's happened: I was hired among a group of almost 20 other attorneys back in November/December. We were put on a base-plus-commission compensation plan to help establish an expanding legal practice; the partners had been practicing in the South for about 25 years or so and were looking to create a nationwide law firm, utilizing online tools to help us run an efficient practice across about 20 states. The firm's revenue goals were extremely aggressive, but it was giving me a chance to:   a) work from home, b) work in estate planning (my preferred area of law), c) establish my own law practice while providing me with a small safety net of income and some experienced support.

The business plan for the firm evolved as they realized the immediate revenue potential was less than they'd hoped for. I think part of the problem is that they don't really remember what it's like to be building a practice from the ground up, which is what we're doing in Chicago (where no one has ever heard of my law firm before). The investment capital started to dry up because they were too aggressive, and ultimately became unsustainable.

I have been offered a commission-only position with the firm that I'm considering taking as a part-time endeavor, as long as it doesn't end up costing me anything, as I can't currently afford many expenses. My path isn't very clear to me right now, and I want to be careful about making a decision so I don't end up in this same position all over again in a few more months. I know I'm going to have to do something else to earn money in the meantime, I just haven't decided exactly what that is, or if I'll change fields entirely.

I'm not as devastated as I think I should be, probably because I started suspecting a few weeks ago that something like this might happen. Also, I have other things on my plate at the moment - I'm writing, I'm working on real estate projects, and I can always go back to freelancing to make a little money if necessary. While I am feeling a bit frustrated and off-balance, I also feel a bit of hopefulness too. This job hadn't been panning out exactly as I'd planned - I wasn't making as much in commission as they'd projected, I wasn't getting to do very much legal work, and I wasn't enjoying the high-pressure sales aspect of it. I think this change is helping me avoid complacency by keeping me from settling for a position I wasn't thrilled about.

It's also made me think about how much things have changed. The general consensus always seems to be that you can be successful if you have a job. But relying on jobs as a sole source of income is something my generation probably shouldn't do; these days, it's just as unstable and unreliable as any other way of making money, including investments, the stock market, starting your own business, etc. The only real way to achieve financial security is through diversification - having multiple sources of income that don't all rely on the same source (e.g. the job market, the housing market, the stock market).

Anyways, that's about it. So, for now, here's my shingle: "Will Write For Food!"

Do You Read Your Writing Out Loud?

I had a very brief chat with another writer via Twitter the other evening who was working on that dreaded portion of any piece of writing: The Ending. I always struggle with ending anything - papers, essays, stories, novels. I find it difficult to balance between giving my piece the overly dramatic, grand finale it deserves versus being way too under-stated to the point that it ends up lackluster and disappointing. When writing blog posts in particular, I never quite know what to say at the end. "The question" is always a good wrap-up, so I've started utilizing that strategy, but before that, I'd always kind of meander off and hope no one noticed my awkward closing rambling. I often feel like I should tack on a "ta daah!" or a "that's all folks!" or some other cheesy tag line, just for a sense of finality.

Something that's always helped me, though, is to step back and read what I've written out loud. I'm always amazed at how much better it makes me feel when I read something out loud and am able to derive a logical conclusion from it. I think it's something we all subconsciously do when we read, anyways - if you are nearing the end of what you're reading, the tone you start interpreting is one of wrapping up, and it isn't nearly as odd as you think it is (being the one immersed in writing it).

For fiction or narratives, though, I think reading something out loud can make you feel even more self-conscious about the sometimes grandiose language you want to utilize to really drive your message home. That's when I take a deep breath and remember the ultimate test of melodrama: the movie announcer voice. Think about it - announcers use some of the most overly-dramatic, cliche, theatrical language we could possibly imagine. And yet, when we watch some of our favorite previews, we still get drawn in, hook, line, and sinker. We don't care that "these people are about to change the course of history" has been used countless times, because it sounds awesome - in context. 

I think this test is part of the reason my husband thinks I'm moderately insane. He'll often wander in and find me reading something enthusiastically out loud to myself. That's usually his cue to back away slowly and see if there's anything car-related on television to drown out my psychotic ranting. Possible mental illness aside, though, I do recommend this test if you are feeling self-conscious about your ending and want to see if it really sounds as ridiculous as you think it does. I've found it's often the set-up that matters more than how you ultimately phrase your ending, so lead into it a bit. Start reading from one or two pages before your problem area, and see if your dramatic ending is warranted, or if it sounds completely different from the tone building up to it. And if it still sounds utterly ridiculous when you read it in your best movie announcer voice, you may want to go back and edit a bit until it sounds right.

Do you read any of your writing out loud to yourself? Is talking to yourself crazy, or is it only crazy if you start answering back? Yes.

.....(ta daaah!)

Dream Interpretations

When I was younger, you could always tell what was trendy at my school by what kinds of library books were missing from the shelves at a given time. I'm not sure what it was, but the reading awareness program in my school district was highly effective. We fought over who got to check out the "cool book" this week. Granted, half of my 4th grade year, I went book-less because I made the cardinal sin of losing a library book. Fortunately, I recovered from this trauma and was eventually able to wrestle for the right to claim one of the cool books again before moving on to middle school.

One of the trends I do remember is when we all discovered the books about interpreting your dreams. We always skipped the beginnings of these books; the authors would always go on some 200 page diatribe about the history of dream interpretations, how they tie in to spirituality, and whatever hocus pocus was trendy at the time the author was writing (usually sometime in the 60's). The real treasure trove was at the end, where there would be a list of things that might appear in your dreams, and what each thing means. There was a point where we discovered some clever author completely did away with the preface and just jumped straight to the list, hence creating a comprehensive dream dictionary.

A few lucky people would manage to race to the shelves and snag these books to check out for the week, and they became the official dream gurus at the lunch table. We'd all discuss the dreams we'd had that night - whether real or made-up - and they would consult their various dream interpretation dictionaries, giving us valuable insight into our inner psyches. Or just providing fodder for us to make fun of each other even more than usual.

My dream from last night had a few odd components to it, from dreaming that I was actually taking sleeping pills (isn't that a bit redundant?), to my childhood home, to wolves, and even a sloth (yes, the actual animal, not a lazy person). I decided to check it out with the first legitimate-looking dream dictionary I was able to locate via Google:

Sleeping pill: Choosing to be ignorant about a situation, or deciding to make a fresh new start

Childhood home: Desires for building a family; unfinished feelings; outdated thinking

Peephole: Looking through a peephole in a dream suggests narrow perspectives and requiring facts to make an informed decision, or a non-reciprocating situation

Nightgown: Acknowledging aspects of yourself you were previously uncomfortable about

Wolf: Survival, beauty, solitude, mystery, self-confidence, pride; being a loner; aggression or sneakiness, an uncontrollable situation

Sloth: Passivity in a situation; need to be assertive; gentleness, laziness, lack of ambition

Airport: Births and deaths; desire for freedom, ambition, and hopes

Do you think dreams have meaning? Have you ever incorporated your dreams into your writing? Are your dreams as incoherent as mine? Or, check out the dream dictionary and post some of your interesting interpretations from a recent dream in the comments!

Dishonesty May Not Be Your Best Strategy. Just Saying.

I'm an estate planning attorney. I don't hide this fact from people, but I'm also not pushy about asking people if they need my services. I feel that this method works best for attracting business, and I'm honest about what I do and what I charge for what I do. That's why it bugs the hell out of me when people don't extend me the same courtesy.

I was at a church function last week, and one of the members I met was someone affiliated with a financial institution. I often network with such people, because we often work well together in providing holistic services to our clients. He invited me to an event that took place yesterday morning across town, explaining I'd get to meet several people in his industry and get to hand out business cards. It sounded like an expo or a networking event, so I agreed.

Saturday morning, I woke up early, drove an hour across town, and ended up sitting through a 2 hour presentation about why I should sell life insurance to people. I then explained I wasn't really interested, got a condescending facial expression that suggested I wasn't "all there" mentally, and drove an hour home.

To be fair, I did get to hand out a few business cards and possibly made a few connections, but if I had been told the real nature of this event, I probably wouldn't have gone. In fact, I feel grossly misled. If I run into this individual at church again, I intend to be civil, but not particularly friendly. I have sat through these kinds of presentations before, back when I was exploring a career as a future CFP, but was turned off due to how incredibly condescending they are. First of all, I had been effectively lied to to get me there and take up 4 hours of my precious free time. Second of all, I didn't like the implication that I was some kind of chump if I didn't take advantage of an "awesome part-time opportunity to earn lots and lots of $$$$!" Just an FYI, if you are a successful person and prefer doing what you currently do versus selling insurance, WFG/TransAmerica thinks you're dumb. And they'll take 2 hours to tell you so.

What really grates on my nerves is how someone who effectively misled me about this event can then act surprised and mildly offended that I didn't want to join his sales group. And that he and his branch manager would try to argue with me about it. I'm familiar with the importance of "overcoming objections" in sales. It's a necessary skill and it's a good one to learn. However, there's a huge difference between engaging in a discussion meant to overcome an objection versus arguing with someone who honestly isn't interested and is pretty miffed about being there in the first place.

Please note: I don't have anything against people that sell insurance. In fact, I think insurance is a very important thing to have. In my line of work, we actually emphasize to our clients that they should have comprehensive insurance coverage if they can afford it - it should be an absolute financial priority, along with retirement planning. It's like estate planning - I never want people to have to USE it, but if they have it, it can make a HUGE difference in a bad situation.

Have you ever sat through a bad sales pitch? Are you painfully polite or can you stomp out without batting an eyelash?