Where All the Ladders Start

In the twilight of his life, William Butler Yeats lost his mojo. His last poem, The Circus Animals' Desertion was published in 1939.  In Circus Animals, Yeats chronicles his fruitless search for his missing inspiration:

I sought a theme, and sought for it in vain.

I sought it daily for six weeks or so.

After failing at finding a theme, he turns his search to the source of his inspiration. Yeats looks back at his greatest works, and realizes that along the way he had begun to cherish the characters created therein more than the ideas they represented:

Players and painted stage took all my love

And not those things that they were emblems of.

Yeats concludes that inspiration is not found in things, but within oneself:

....Now that my ladder's gone

I must lie down where all the ladders start, 

in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. 

It is oddly encouraging that even the man considered by many to be the greatest poet of the 20th century found himself at the well of inspiration without a drop of water to drink.  I have loved my job since I was 24.  Still, work is work and if you are lucky like me, most of the time it is fun. But at the end of the day, it's still work.  As I learned this summer, work that no longer inspires you is just miserable. 

I lost my ladder.  

For the last six weeks, I have been looking for my ladder—thinking a lot about my practice and what I love about it. I love the daily interactions with my staff and my partner, and most of all with my clients.  The biggest draw for me of doing estate planning and probate is the chance to hear someone's story.  Everyone's got one if you take the time to listen.  I have the privilege of hearing those stories and the satisfaction of helping people. I also enjoy the demands of civil litigation and a good fight--that's where the intellectual challenges happen.  Our local Bar has some tremendous talent.

My office reopens Monday, November 26, 2018, after a long and involuntary break thanks to Hurricane Michael. I'm excited to get back to practicing law. I'm excited to have a computer network  and a printer. It's the little things, am I right?  I miss my clients and colleagues.  I miss my employees and the people who are a part of our daily routine. I wanted to hug our UPS delivery guy yesterday when he carried in some area rugs we ordered to cover the ugly floor situation we have going on right now. 

I even miss the daily grind of running a small law firm and all the challenges it entails. 

My personal office upstairs was wrecked by the hurricane, so I had to move to a different one. I relocated downstairs, back full circle to the office I had when I was just a baby lawyer—armed with nothing but dreams and ambition and a ton of raw knowledge.  When I passed the Bar my mentor Chuck told me "you know more about the law right now than you ever will again, but you know nothing about practicing law.  So pay attention." 

I'm back again, but this time with 24 years of practice.

I found my ladder.


XOXO

Julie

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