When I was younger, and did not have a house or a family or need to fund my children’s education, or want to travel the world, I used to say that if I was a professional athlete who was awarded a contract for some multiple of $10,000,000, you would be able to measure the length of my career in games played, not years.
There is an old story about a young man who, after finally meeting the love of his life following years searching the globe for his one true soulmate, took his girlfriend’s hands in his own one starlit summer evening, stared deeply into her beautiful eyes, and whispered to her in a husky, excited voice: “since I met you, I can’t eat. I can’t drink. I can’t sleep… I’m completely broke.”
One of the values that drove me for a good long time was the importance of working hard and generating many billable hours.
I have concluded that there are three reasons that many lawyers work long hours. Some do it to serve their clients well. Others do it because they are workaholics. And finally, there are those who work all of the time because they are ambitious and they want to earn a lot of money. What all of these lawyers have in common is that they all believe that working hard will make them happy. It does not seem to work for many of them.
By the time that I figured out that I could no longer cope with the pressures of the legal profession and that something had to give, I had been practicing business law for thirty-three years. What can I say… I am a slow learner. It took me almost another seven years to get out. I escaped with my health intact, but just barely.
“I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.”
Steve Martin
I like money as much as the next guy. Actually, I like money much more than I like the next guy.
The other day my wife, Maureen, told me about a friend who was complaining that his busy adult children do not call him very often. Her friend asked Maureen, “Don’t they care about their dad?” To which Maureen replied, “they care… in their spare time.”
Maureen had it exactly right. Busy people tend to focus on the issues in their life that require their immediate attention. They put the things that they can take for granted aside to worry about when they can find the time.
I was a socialist at age twenty. I went to law school because I wanted to help the poor and the oppressed. By the time that I was thirty I was a business lawyer. Stuff like that happens to people.
This morning someone remarked that much of my writing about the legal profession is a tad negative. She said, “you practiced law for a long time; you were good at what you did; you made enough money to retire and travel the world. Surely you must have liked something about being a lawyer, didn’t you?”
“It just doesn’t matter.”
Bill Murray in Meatballs
I am a Boomer who never owned a Beemer. The best that I ever did was a Honda Accord and I had to make my way through a Chevy Citation, Dodge Aries, and a couple of Pontiacs to get that far.
I had a few partners who owned Beemers. They all said that they bought them because they liked how they drove, but we all knew the truth. What they really liked was how they looked in them. Successful and well-off.