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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Downtown Panama City--Changed for Good

I've worked in downtown Panama City since I was 17, which for those keeping count is thirty-one years.  I worked downtown through the lean times when we struggled to find a coherent identity and through the prosperous times when everything seemed to finally be moving in the same direction.

Today I went to my office to keep working on the never ending list of things left to do before we can reopen for business.  It was wet and cold today. Everything seems more grim in that kind of weather.  It is already grim enough here right now, we could have done without it.

Shine enough light on anything and it looks better.

I stopped off at Vinny and Bay's Coffee and Eatery for a mocha and sat at the bar facing the street. From my seat I had a great view of Harrison Avenue north and south of 4th Street.  One of the things I love about downtown Panama City is the old and new storefronts:  there is such a perfect mix between the old from several eras and the new, that it gives our downtown a really special small town retro vibe.

That view up and down Harrison reminded me of better days when things weren't so roughed up.  I squinted my eyes and it all looked normal again.  Of course, it will be a while before we get there in reality. But we will.

Vinny and Bay's is an inspiring place, created by two friends to make a place for people with Special Needs to work and be proud of who they are.  On the wall is an art installation which reads "Changed for Good" a line from my favorite song in Wicked.  The lyrics of For Good play off the difference in meanings of the word good-- at once referencing forever and at the same time meaning better.

Elphaba and Glinda both sing "Who can say if I've been changed for the better" but that "I have been changed for good."

Downtown has definitely been changed.  Buildings are gone, some never to return. Nothing will ever be the same.  Change is inevitable, whether it comes all at once like it did for us or gradually. And it is surely for good.  We can't turn back time. Right now, it certainly does not feel like our town has been changed for the better.  But really, that remains to be seen.

It is up to the stakeholders--we who choose to operate our businesses and work downtown, the patrons of  those businesses, and those who choose to live downtown--it is up to us to make sure that this change that has been thrust upon us by Mother Nature is for good.



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Hurricane Michael: A Month Later

Tomorrow will be one month since the town I've called home for 47 years was utterly destroyed by Hurricane Michael.  I loved this place before the hurricane ripped it to pieces a month ago, and I love it even more now.

No matter how big Panama City gets, this place is still a small town. I can't go anywhere without seeing at least one person I know.  Sometimes that gets old, but it has sure been a comfort in the last month.  People here are welcoming.  Maybe that's because we have two big military bases, or maybe it is just our way. You can move here at any age and within months you're one of us. You don't have to be BORN here to be FROM here.

We may be shattered and torn but the heart of this town is still beating and the things that make this community a wonderful place to live are alive and well:  they don't exist in bricks and mortar. What makes this place the town we all love is its people, and we are down but in no way are we out.

That's not to say things aren't grim right now.  People are struggling. Struggling with sudden unemployment, sudden homelessness, never ending lists of tasks and repairs to do or arrange, anxiety as we wait to see what our insurance companies are going to do, and the depressing and ever present sight of debris piles and collapsed buildings that are a constant reminder of our new, more desperate reality.

Just because a month has gone by and the initial trauma is over, don't think for a second that our town has suddenly transformed back to the Panama City of October 9, 2018 as if nothing ever happened.

Don't believe the callous disregard shown by the lack of national news coverage.  NOTHING is back to normal here.

Nothing.




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