Futurelawyer

I'm Rethinking My Decision To Swim With The Rays This Week In Grand Cayman

How About We Cancel The Cancel Culture?

The recent kerfuffle about the MSNBC pundit who inartfully compared the Bernie Sanders movement to Nazi Blitzkrieg and the resulting calls to fire him from the Twitterverse got me thinking about Cancel Culture. We are teaching our children that anything they say can be used against them in the court of public opinion. The Internet makes it easy to be a judgmental troll who wants to ruin everyone who says things with which they don't agree. We are teaching our children that the worst thing they can experience is to be offended by another's speech. Guess what, kids. We Boomers grew up with some much more serious stuff, like the threat of global nuclear annihilation. To paraphrase Rodney King: "Why can't we all just let offensive words bounce off our delicate brains?" By the way, this is an equal opportunity problem. Comics, politicians, business people and just about anyone who gets their 15 minutes of fame is being attacked for what they say, instead of what they do. Do we believe in free speech or not? Are we a free society or not? Asking for a friend.

Vicarious Trauma In Lawyers - Empathy Can Be Dangerous

Vicarious Trauma. Good friend, Josh Chilson, highlights this ABA article today, about vicarious trauma experienced by professions that deal every day with other people's tragedies, death, misfortune and generally bad days. I wish I had read about this when I was a young lawyer. Some of my readers are still young. Read and learn, grasshopper. I spent many years with anxiety, stress, and general worry in my law practice. Tragedy and death happens to all of us. But, helping others get through theirs, and experiencing empathy for them can create a secondary reaction in those in our legal profession, and in other professions that meet people on their worst days. Setting boundaries. Mindfulness. Meditation. Prioritizing family and friends. Recognizing that we must live in the moment. Learning the Stoic concept of indifference. You can set bad events aside and still care. The Stoics talk about preferred indifference. When a spouse or family member dies, it is not the indifference of not caring. It is the recognition that we too will die, and the death of the other cannot be allowed to affect our ability to live a virtuous and happy life. All of these are valid techniques for dealing with trauma, either personal or vicarious. Name the problem. Look at it. Recognize it. You're halfway to solving it. Now, go do something joyous today.

#WhyMenGetMarried - Women Make A Home Beautiful

After all the wedding craziness, I want to thank the beautiful Diane for making the Living Room livable again. I almost don't want to go in there for fear I will mess it up. Thanks, beautiful. 

#ParrotSunday - Meet Nigel - An African Grey With Wanderlust

Nigel The African Grey. Nigel is an African Grey parrot from California that disappeared for four years, until located using a microchip and returned to his owner. However, Nigel, who left speaking with a clipped British accent,  was now speaking with a Latin accent, and looking for someone named Larry. Oh well. At least he came home.

 

The Analog Revolution - Back To Our Roots?

Film Photography Comeback? I love my vinyl record collection. I have two turntables in the office, and I love the slow pace of going through the records, choosing one, taking it out of the sleeve, using a dust brush, carefully placing it on the turntable, and turning on the imperfect, but authentic, sound. When the first side concludes, I am forced to get out of my chair, walk to the turntable, turn the record over, and begin again. OK, Millennial. I get it. Why waste all that time, when I can just click an icon on my computer or smartphone, and listen to pure, digital music? Hey, I get it. I am the FutureLawyer, remember? But, there is something primal about OLD tech, and music isn't the only game in town. I used to spend hours in a darkroom, winding 35 mm color slide film, developing it in plastic tanks, trimming and mounting the slides, and then putting them in an enlarger and making Cibachrome prints on paper. I would develop them in big plastic drums, and the magic of seeing beautiful color prints come out of the drums was palpable. I still have all of my darkroom equipment in my den, and occasionally threaten to get back to it. Anybody else out there have a bunch of old camera bodies and lenses that need dusting off?

#WhyIAmASolo - I Can't Afford To Retire

Is Samsung Incompetent Or Bent On World Domination?

Samsung Message. Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor) is a principle from philosophy. Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case the one that requires the smallest number of assumptions is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation. So, when millions of Samsung phones around the world got a suspicious text message from Samsung the other day, that contained only two 1s, there had to be an explanation. The likeliest one was that Samsung engineers screwed up, and somebody was testing something and pushed the wrong button. The other was that there is a vast Samsung conspiracy involving millions of Samsung phone and device owners all over the world, and that we are testing our world domination takeover. Occam was right. Samsung was incompetent. But, does that make you feel any better? It occurs to me that joining everyone in the world with tech in the cloud is all the scarier when a simple error can have such far reaching consequences. We all may be part of a vast conspiracy to assimilate us into a Borg like collective consciousness. Oh, probably not. Jeez.

#PoetryFriday - Charles Bukowski - "Each Line Must Be An Entity Unto Itself"

My fellow law bloggers, and fellow writers, should listen to Charles Bukowski, (American-German Poet, novelist, and short story writer) in this short interview. He speaks on death and writing. He welcomes death, as a natural ending. But, he also talks about writing. Many have heard me say that writing should never be boring. It should be short and have impact. Blogs and poetry should bring forth an emotion. Laughter, tears, happiness, sadness, all the universal human emotions. Some say that Stoics lack emotion. The truth is that Stoics feel emotions as much as others. They learn to bring them under control because strong emotions tend to reduce our ability to live happily. But, each line of a blog post or poem must live and be impactful on its own. The writing becomes shorter, to the point, and anything but boring. Each line must be an entity unto itself.

#WhyIAmASolo - My Meetings Are All Emails

This cute photo from @TheFlaBar made me smile. But, only because I don't need to carry a sign around reminding my co-workers to use email. There isn't anyone necessary to have meetings with. So, call me, or email me, or text me. Just don't meeting me.