Friday night was the annual county bar dinner, which we first attended five years ago as newcomers, awkwardly showing up as the very first people there. Now the room full of strangers is one full of friends and colleagues, and we got many words of encouragement and advice for our new venture.
One of them was to journal, so that we can look back in a year and see how far we've come. Well, I was going to anyway.
I tend to measure exhaustion by the standard of the year the twins were born. I am sure there are more exhausting things humans could undertake--higher-order multiples--but it's likely to be the most exhausting thing *I* ever undertake.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a beach resort with food brought to your lounge chair and 10 being newborn twins and two preschoolers, starting this firm has been a 9, pushing 9.5.
Well, DOB doesn't do things by halves or ramp up slowly. We had a new office to move into (temporarily, we'll move again in a couple of months into permanent space), a paralegal to pay, equipment to set up, email and website to get working, all the existing clients he brings with him from his old firm and all the new people who started coming through the door even before we have it.
I haven't done that much actual lawyering yet; instead I get to be the person who spends hours on the phone with the internet service provider, trying to figure out why our email still isn't working (it is now, though, after about a week of soul-sucking phone tag, and now we get to call again over the bill). And writes the checks. There are a lot of things to write checks for.
Everybody wants to offer you bundles of services, but none of the bundles quite do everything, and then somebody has to figure out which one does what and how to get the most of what you need for the least overlap.
So, very much as when the twins were babies, I have been very busy and I'm completely exhausted and yet somehow it doesn't feel like I've *done* anything. But this Friday I get to go to court.
And meanwhile there's been kids to be fed and educated and DOB has, inevitably, injured a muscle in his shoulder, putting him down to one functioning limb, which always makes life more complicated. Fortunately we have some well-established school ruts to run in, and I pulled out a trick from way back in those days and made up a 3-week rotational schedule of meals so that I don't ever have to think about what I'm going to fix for supper again. Yes, it's all boring and it's time to ignore the inspiring and novel things other people are doing. And this time the kids are big enough for some significant choring, so the house hasn't completely fallen apart.
But, we've made it through the first month. And if we can just figure out the billing, we should make it through next month, too.
1 comment:
It certainly was interesting setting up my office, but at least I had my brother to help me at the time, and some infrastructure already in place at my office location. Oh, and I didn't have kids, just a pregnant wife.
Like you, I count chaos by kid years. As in, that year we had a newborn, a one year old, and a two year old. Totally nuts, and it has never been that crazy since.
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