Getting Started

Here is a random picture of Choppy, because I really didn’t have a good picture to put here that fit this post,and who doesn’t like to see a picture of a dog dressed up as a hot dog? Plus, the beginning of this post is (at least slightly) serious, so I thought best to have some humor to get things started.

Two years ago, my dad opened up his own law firm after practicing law for 30+ years. Shortly thereafter, he asked me to come work for him. When I made the decision to work for him, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I loved working for him, and I got to do a lot of high end litigation work that was challenging and exciting to be involved in.

Then, a few months ago, my dad announced to me that he was planning to retire at the end of 2012. While it wasn’t entirely a surprise, this posed a rather immediate problem for me: unemployment.

Rather than react in the mature and lawyerly way, as one would expect a thirty-something year old lawyer to do, I instead reacted absolutely immaturely: I ignored my impending unemployment by more or less pretending said unemployment wasn’t happening and attempting to get out of any conversation with my dad where it would come up. To me, this avoidance of the impending unemployment situation seemed to be a good idea, as pretty much the last thing a lawyer in the worst legal job market ever (who has a mortgage and an expensive shoe habit to boot) wants to hear is that she will soon be facing unemployment.

And so I implemented this plan of ignoring my coming unemployment and dent in my shoe budget, and did so very well, if I do say so myself. That said, my dad is not cruel and heartless, so it was unlikely that he would just retire without any attention being paid to my future job prospects and economic situation (though I am guessing he doesn’t care so much about my need for cute shoes). He has, unlike all of my previous employers, known me from the moment I was born, and so he apparently realized that I would, if at all possible, continue to ignore my impending unemployment quite likely forever (or at least until there was no way to continue ignoring it, such as the moment when my credit card is rejected while attempting to buy toilet paper).

To make me face my looming unemployment, in late June of this year, on our way back from our annual Canadian fishing trip, my dad pulled several pages of loose leaf paper out of his bag, and made me look at what he had written on those pages.

At least this picture of Choppy dressed up in human clothing remotely relates to what I just wrote. The fishing trip part. Not the part about the papers. Obviously.

On the paper, my dad had written out several options that I could take upon his retirement with regard to my own employment. And, as we were going down the road at 65+ miles per hour, I couldn’t ignore my impending unemployment any longer, no matter how much I would like to do so.

The pages of loose leaf were filled with all sorts of numbers, plans, and options for what I could do upon my dad’s retirement. For a moment, I considered that I did have several immediate options to continue my avoidance of the unemployment problem:

1. I could have told him my dad that I thought there was a problem with the boat trailer we were pulling behind the car, which would have been highly believable, though only a temporary fix.
2. I could have faked a bout of motion sickness, an ailment that used to plague me regularly, but has not been much of a problem with regard to cars since I was a kid. However, the thought of getting out of the car beside a mosquito-infected northern Minnesota highway and fake a vomiting spell was not exactly appealing, as anyone who has dealt with thirsty Upper Midwestern bloodsuckers can attest.
3. This same mosquito problem also posed an issue for the option of jumping out of the car, though it was, admittedly, slightly outweighed by the potential for injury that goes along with jumping out of a car moving at 65+ miles per hour (though I will give credit to the mosquitoes that this statement is only a slight exaggeration of their unpleasantness).

Faced with this failure of decent options to employ in continuing to ignore the problem, I chose to confront what I had been successfully avoiding for months: my uncertain employment future.

There, in the car on that northern Minnesota road, I looked at the options my dad had laid out on the sheets of loose leaf paper. On the paper, there were several options, and they were, to say the least, extremely generous. I could take over the firm. I could merge the firm with another firm. I could come up with my own idea as to what to do with the firm. Or, I could take time off and do something else: start a business, find a new job (law-related or not), travel, etc.

As if there was any question as to which option I was going to take. I mean, come on: in this horrible legal economy, my career on the brink of its most productive years, a significant amount of personal debt (plus the shoe habit), and my dad giving me the chance to take over a highly successful law practice. What other option was there?

Obviously, I’m going to take the time off.

And so, here I am, several months later, my unemployment having arrived with the beginning of the new year. On the plus side, and rather atypically for me, I have a plan: I’m going to take Choppy – my oft-humiliated, Facebook-Famous, and well-loved dog – and travel, à la Steinbeck and Charlie, or Robert Louis Stevenson and Modestine.

OK, so maybe it isn’t much of a plan.

To be fair, there is a bit more to this plan than that. As I have done almost every day since I was a kid, I will write (a habit that, more than once, led to me getting legitimately sick while riding in the backseat as a kid). Unlike the past, though, I will write about what I am doing here on this site, for the whole wide world to see. Putting my writing out for others is, despite regularly writing for Choppy’s thousands of fans and having written countless legal documents that govern the fate of my clients and their businesses, rather scary for me. Almost terrifying. But hopefully, putting it all out there for your (hopefully enjoyable) consumption will give me a reason to keep going on the road, when I might otherwise come up with a way to legitimize spending 12 months on the couch, in front of the television, catching up on all of the shows people recommend to me (I swear, I will eventually start Downtown Abbey, even if I am not spending 12 months on the couch).

Thus begins what will hopefully be a productive year, traveling with Choppy and avoiding the responsibility of a real job (though I expect that there will be times when writing will feel very, very much like a real job). There are a few basic places I want to go and events I want to attend, as well as a general schedule of where I am headed, but for the most part, it’s going to be a year thrown together, with the destinations chosen on a day-to-day basis. I’ve got a basic outline of where I am headed over the year here.

We are officially on the road in a couple weeks (exact date not to be put here, as a concession to those who are more responsible than me and would rather I not detail exactly where I will be on a day-to-day basis. Also the reason the blog postings will likely be a day or two behind where I actually am in my trip). I’ll try to keep this blog amusing, quite likely more through our misadventures than our adventures, though I hope there are more of the latter than the former, for my sanity’s sake. You can follow us on Facebook or Twitter as well.

And so, we’ll see you on the road!

Ready to get on the road (right after I figure out how to fit 30 pairs of shoes in my suitcase).