Futurelawyer

You Could Be A Stoic If...

Embrace the suck. This phrase is a staple in the Army, and is an outgrowth of Stoic philosophy. Nietzsche adopted it in his famous "Love your fate" phrase. Accept the good and the bad and concentrate on the present. You'll be glad you did. If you want a plain spoken, common sense approach to living your best life, check out my book, "Stoicism - Philosophy For The Rest Of Us".

Reading Is Fundamental.

Ebooks Don't Have Comments, Do They?

I don't know that I understand this cartoon. My Ebooks don't have a comment section at the end? But, I get it. Books on Paper have a tactile advantage; but, if a critic gets ahold of them, they write their nasty comments in the margins.

WordPerfect, Kofax Power PDF , Kindle Scribe, And Android - Power Foursome.

WordPerfect. I am a member of a minority, a WordPerfect user, and I am proud to say it is still the best and most functional, and easiest to use, of the wordprocessors. Yes, Microsoft has made Word a staple of modern computing; but Word files can be read and used by Wordperfect, and can be sent as Word files back. However, as an Android user, there hasn't been a way to read and deal with WordPerfect files on phones and tablets. There was a reader app long ago, but it needed to be sideloaded as an APK file, and wasn't very functional. Enter my favorite PDF software, Kofax PDF.  I use it every day to create, send, collaborate, efile, and otherwise deal with PDF files. So, my workaround, while a little cumbersome, works great. I merely take my WordPerfect files or pleadings, and publish them to PDF, just as I always do in order to Efile them with the Court system, or send them to clients and others. However, I can transfer them to my Kindle Scribe as PDFs and read them on the Scribe. From the Scribe I can email them to myself, using the Send to Kindle app, and open them on the phone with the Android version of Kofax Power PDF. PDFs sent to the Scribe using Send to Kindle app can be highlighted, edited, and otherwise written on as well. WordPerfect now. WordPerfect forever.

When In Doubt, Throw It Out.

Over The Top. Execupundit writes about cleaning out the piles of paper that tend to congregate and complicate our lives. The "in doubt, throw it out" mantra has many devotees, including the "pick it up, and if it doesn't give you joy, throw it out" crowd. I long ago gave up trying to decide what to keep and what to throw away. I decided to just stop adding to the piles. I started putting books into digital form, so that my piles of books stopped growing as much, and my digital library now fits in a thin, tablet device called an Amazon Kindle Scribe. I have saved legal documents on the computer for 15 years or so; but, still have paper files that I put in boxes and pay huge sums to store. But, I think that I have personally saved thousands of trees from a certain death. Our lives will always be filled with "things" that accumulate over time. I think, however, that spending time deciding what to do with "things" is a waste of valuable life experiences. So, I will concentrate on spending what time I have left, writing poetry, and posts about living a good life, and vegetating in front of a digital box spewing inane stories for public consumption. If you aren't living, you are dead already.

#TBT - Book Fair.

The men and women walked the aisles
of the book fair.
Their gaze fell upon
ornate leather bindings
and they moved into the booths
like panthers on the prowl,
seeing through narrow eyes
squinting as in a bright sun.
Their fingers lovingly moved
over the books
with a reverence
reserved for their god.
They opened the books,
looking for marks of the first born,
judging their condition
like beauty pageant contestants.
Money was no object,
and rarity was a good thing.
In this contest,
antiquity was the winner,
and the collectors
cared more about depriving others
of a find,
and keeping the books safe
from the destroyers of knowledge.
After their purchases,
they went home to their other books,
put the new ones
in the bookcase,
and never touched them again. 

"You're An Old Man Now."

I can't seem to get past a page or two of Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, without an "ah,ha" moment. This morning, this little gem popped up: "You're an old man now. It's time to stop being a slave; to no longer be pulled along like a puppet on strings; to stop being dissatisfied with today and afraid of tomorrow." There is a lot to unpack in this simple bit of wisdom. We are always being tugged at, or pulled at, by our friends, family, colleagues, strangers, and just about everyone we meet. They all want something, if only for us to get out of their way as they pursue whatever silliness they intend. We allow ourselves to be slaves to our own desires, whether it be food, sex, anger, hatred, or whatever attracts us in the moment. We spend too much time worrying about what has already happened, and cannot be changed, or worrying about what might happen tomorrow, or the next day, or next week, month or year. It is okay to prepare for the future; just don't let it be at the expense of enjoyment of the only time we have, which is right now, right here. I am enjoying a pleasant Saturday morning with my gadgets and computers. However, even at that, Marcus has some advice for me: "Put away entertainments, set aside distractions, and look at yourself as you truly are: blood and bones, a network of nerves and veins. Your breath is only air, sucked in one moment and blown out the next. The mind, then, is the ruling part."

Always remember that you are in control of the mind. And that it is the only thing you control.

Stoicism - Philosophy For The Rest Of Us - Now Available On Kindle.

Stoicism-Philosophy For The Rest Of Us - Kindle Edition. If you are a Kindle book collector, my new book, Stoicism - Philosophy For The Rest Of Us, is now available in Ebook and Kindle format. Only $9.99. You can still get the paperback version for $16.99 at Amazon. The wisdom of the ages is available to all of us, if we are listening.

So, FutureLawyer, Which Electronic Note Device Will You Use Today?

Remarkable. When I was a child, I did childish things. Now, I am an adult, and I do grown up things. Like, use products and software that gets the job done, even if it is a little clunky. I loved my first electronic tablet, the Remarkable 2. It is impossibly thin, and note taking is smooth as writing on paper. It automatically syncs all my notes, pdfs, and ebooks to my desktop and the Remarkable cloud, using the Connect software. But, when Amazon finally put out the Kindle Scribe, I found my ideal ebook device, which also had a basic note taking capability, and I put the Remarkable away. I discovered, however, that, even though I was thoroughly embedded in the Kindle universe, and had several hundred books in my collection, all I was using the Kindle for was my daily calendar. I made notes throughout the day, and kept my marked up calendars for future reference. However, one day, I pulled out my Remarkable 2 tablet, and I realized that, even though it didn't have a backlight, and even though the Scribe had a better resolution at 300 dpi, I enjoyed taking notes on the Remarkable, and was using it for seminars, conventions, client conferences, and storing my notes on it. So, like Deion Sanders at the beginning of his career, when asked which I prefer, I must now say, with Deion, BOTH. What's in your briefcase?

Have You Purchased The New Stoicism Book Yet?