I can't sleep, so I may as well post.

As you can imagine, it is a special event in the career of a lawyer when that lawyer brings in her first client. I remember mine: It was 1996, and I was flying from Dallas home to Houston after having attended a seminar, and I was exhausted. Someone on the Southwest flight bought drinks for everyone with his drink coupons, and I wondered aloud if he had just won a big case. Before my seatmate could guess otherwise, I started laughing aloud at myself for assuming he was a lawyer and that his celebration was law-related . . . he could have just become a father, or just won a lottery or just have been having a good day. My seatmate laughed and we began talking in the way that people do on a short Southwest flight home on a Friday evening. As it turned out, she was the president of her own company and had just flown to Dallas to get advice on an employment law issue, but didn't really click with the lawyer she had traveled to see.

I represented her in that matter and a number of others. When the day ultimately came that her business took a turn for the worse, I was the person she called at midnight at my home in Dallas, where I had moved, to talk through the hard decisions together.

She was a role model for me, my first client. She was in her 40's and was smart and brave and determined to follow her vision to do the work she enjoyed and make a living at it. I learned as much, if not more, from her as she learned from me.

We ultimately lost touch with each other, my client and I. Her business shut down and she did not need my advice, and then my father died and I basically checked out of the world for a few years. I have thought of her from time to time and wondered how she was doing, but no longer had a good phone number or email for her and wasn't able to find good contact information for her. I regretted having fallen out of touch.

So you can imagine my delight when I came home one night this week to find I had a voice mail from my client. The next day, we had a wonderful time catching up on our personal and professional lives for the last 10+ years, and I'm helping her with a new matter. Besides being happy to catch up with an old friend, it was immensely flattering to me that my client was determined to find me because it is my advice that she trusts.

Anyway, a cool thing.

Letting Go of the Papers

I have embarked upon a major simplification effort, one in which the first step is tackling and purging the physical clutter that surrounds me at work and at home. To assist in my efforts, I have been reading organization books for tips. I was struck by the fact that nearly every source I have read advises one to throw out any object that carries negative emotions or memories.

This has been really hard for me. There are a number of documents I have held onto that I thought I needed for my own protection. They serve as documentation of certain things from the past. Every time I run across them, they make me feel angry and hurt and victimized all over again, but I hold onto them out of fear regarding what might happen if I need them one day and don't have them. Today I spent a few hours de-cluttering my office, and I threw away a garbage-can full of papers. Among the papers were some notes of mine that were very emotionally charged, and I let them go without regret. I do worry a little that I will need them one day. But I was able to throw them away today because in the calculus of my mental health, I now believe the price of hanging onto those documents exceeds the price I may pay for letting them go.

Short Sightedness and Hind Sightedness

The other day, I stopped in a Subway sandwich shop to buy dinner. I rarely go to Subway, but was following a whim and trying to eat healthfully. Apparently, a man had been hanging around outside the shop that day, asking people to buy him a sandwich. He was tall and extremely thin, so much so that it seemed obvious he was in need of a meal. I noticed the man when I walked up to the store, but did not know he had been requesting sandwiches, as he did not ask me for one or approach anyone while I was nearby.

While I was at the counter ordering, the man came in with a 20-something guy who waited near the register for the man to order a meal. The man wasn't bothering anyone, just standing in line to place his order. But the girls behind the counter apparently believed I was buying a meal for him and started to warn me. Then the manager walked up to the man and, in front of everyone else in the store, loudly warned him not to demand sandwiches from his customers. The man tried to explain that the guy near the register was buying him a sandwich, but the manager was intent on berating him.

I was so upset with how the manager had publicly embarrassed the man that I explained I did not wish to patronize the place if that is how people are treated there and walked out. Having had the chance now to think about this more, I really wish I had done something more significant to help the man, who as I drive away was tucking into his meal outside. In retrospect, I should have purchased a gift card to another restaurant that he could have used whenever he liked without being publicly humiliated.

Starting Over, Yet Again

I have been thinking a lot about the effect of geography on one's life. Mostly, whether it is possible to get a "do over" in life by changing location. It seems as if nearly everyone I know has lived in the same general geographic area his/her entire life, so I have few examples.

There actually is only one that I can really bring to mind. A friend of mine from college moved from Austin to a random Midwestern city years ago, and many of us, her included, wondered what she was thinking, especially given that she had lived in the South her entire life. But that city was like a chrysalis for my friend. She spent a long winter doing a lot of work fixing up an old house and in her new environment was able to change old habits, with the result being major weight loss she has maintained to this day. My friend came into her own in that city, with the weight change being merely a physical manifestation of other changes.

But she was younger than I am when she made that move; it has probably been 10 years now, and she is just a year older than me. Is 39 and counting too old for a dog who wants to learn new tricks?

Patterns

I'm back from the dead, or at least the holding pattern. I have been thinking a lot about patterns lately. Two patterns in particular stand out for me: First, I tend to work for the same boss over and over and over again, not in a good way. Second, when thinking about making significant decisions in my life (schools, jobs, relationships), I have acted timidly, leaning toward what is most accomplished most easily or with the least risk, rather than what I want the most.

Both of these things are about to change imminently.