Dane Whitman is the only Black Knight I respect in Book Five: Working Through the Maze 2018

The title is a just for fun Marvel reference. Curious to see who picked up on it.

Drove to work. More expensive parking garage. Come to work. Only lawyer. Look at my list of things to do… yup. More research into things that are Chinese Language which makes zero sense in total.

Around 10:00 White Boss walks in to the office. He just left the new building they bought that we are moving into this month. Chinese Boss is still there. He’s on the phone with her. There are things about the building light placement she doesn’t like. So she’s telling him to fix it. Rightly, he tells her that she is the one staring at the problem and he is outside of the building. But he makes the call. Tells the contractor to fix it… guesses as to what Chinese Boss wants. Call Chinese Boss back. Updates her. Asks repeatedly if he needs to come back to the new building to help her get things the way she wants it.

See… this is why things aren’t going well for you guys. Poor use of attorney time. White Boss is the active attorney. He should either (1) be working cases; (2) be working with staff to improve procedure; or (3) doing attorney things. Chinese Boss is the one who says she doesn’t want to do lawyer stuff anymore and is running the business. She needs to run things… find out the most effective, quickest, most professional, most efficient way of doing things and making that happen. Just as with Me and these bloody Chinese Language issues. Have a Chinese Language Proficient person hunt down and gather the research, then let me take that raw data and transform it into a proper English Language Legal Argument.

Arguably, though, it makes a certain kind of sense. So much of what an attorney does is react (at least in our style of law). Criminal Defense is all about reacting to the Government… the Government Charges, the Government time table, the Government Evidence. Immigration Law is all about reacting to the Government… the government changing the laws, the government asking for more evidence, the government controlling the time tables. So if you’re not careful, you’re whole life can become one long exercise of reacting. But that is no way to go through life. You want to be able to react (quickly and intelligently) but you don’t want your entire life to be reacting. Some things should be acting.

The Metaphor:
Build a house. You don’t build a house via reactions. You repair a house via reactions. But the original, initial item must be about preparing, planning, and taking action. Because what you build before you settle into “reactionary living” is the foundation of what you’ve got. If your house is “we’ll see what we need as we start living in it” then you are never settled. You never have a foundation. You never have a strong place to start from. And it feels very much like that is what happened to this firm.

Here’s a not-at-all funny but super accurate depiction of shit:
The firm at present is 5 people. Chinese Boss, White Boss, Me, Muse, and Dylan.
White Boss has been doing this the longest. Followed by Chinese Boss. Followed by Muse. Followed by Me. Followed by Dylan.
White Boss started all of this in the Fall of 2014. Almost exclusively building his Appointment Case load.
Chinese Boss started all of this in the Summer of 2015. Bringing in the Chinese and Immigration elements. It did not take long for White Boss to tell her that he was not doing Immigration work anymore.
Muse started as part-time in 2016 and did not move to full time until recently.
I started here in April 2017.
Dylan started here in December 2017.

White Boss talks often about how he’s exhausted and overloaded which is why he needs to use me more like a Law Clerk than an attorney.
Chinese Boss pretty much introduced herself to me by saying she didn’t enjoy being a lawyer and wanted to focus on being a business manager. EXCEPT yesterday? She was telling me how she no longer enjoys being a business manager.
Muse just said that she is exhausted all day, every day. Just… totally drained and wiped out. And likely leaving the firm this summer.
Because I was drained, wiped out, exhausted, and experiencing heavy Compassion Fatigue… I have already put in my notice.
Dylan… just started. He’s been here for two months. I’m glad he still has his energy.

But there you go. Co-Leader: states that he feels spread too thin. Head Leader: states that she no longer enjoys any aspect of her job. Assistant 1: totally burnt out. Associate: totally burnt out.
NOT a great business model. And painfully, not something that had to happen. Because if the leaders feel burnt out, stressed out, or like they’re “over it”… they can make decisions and strategies to counter act that. So far, their strategy has been “get more people to work for us”… which doesn’t solve anything if you don’t change your behavior. If the problem is too many useless hammers in the room, and you hire more employees to use the hammers… you can’t keep buying hammers. That way the problem is exacerbated not stemmed.
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White Boss is talking about the issues they are having with the building. He starts with a shrug, a roll of his eyes, and says “It is a Chinese hire.” So… there you go. Chinese Boss wants to go through White Boss for corrections and the like because of Chinese Cultural Bullshit. The contractors and workers don’t want to “lose face” by having done something wrong, so they’ll argue that what they did was correct. Chinese Boss doesn’t want to be the one that makes these guys feel like they lost face, so she doesn’t want to be the one to correct the issue. But the brash, white American who “doesn’t understand Chinese culture” can be unreasonable and demand that things be changed in the middle of a project.

I get that we have an obligation to respect and appreciate the cultures around us… but we should also behave like fucking grown ups. Tell people we want X. If you don’t get X, you have the right to demand X. If you get X but it doesn’t work, you have the right to request Y. You may have to pay more and suffer a delay… but that is how things work.

I have to take a moment to officially appreciate the irony of things. Tiny Town was… in many ways a dead zone. Especially culturally. Handshake Culture with less than 2% diversity of any kind. People saying “We don’t need things in writing around here.” Frankly… drove me batty. Because all it takes is 1 person to screw someone over… and handshake culture will never work for that person again. “We agreed to $5,000 if I repainted your whole house in a month’s time.” “I never thought you’d be able to get it done that fast. How ‘bout I pay you $3,000 and we call it good.” Handshake culture. But then to come here? To the Chinese Culture? Also a fairly big jump into the unknown and frighteningly alien. Everything is done on paper so that there is a record of what was agreed to. But nobody wants to be the one that “causes a stir.” So shitty Chinese people take advantage (we have many cases wherein Chinese Person A gave money to Chinese Person B for services; B does not do those service. A has a very difficult time personally going after B for the return of money.)

SO… perfect world for me? To live in a place with multi-cultural-ism where I can experience diversity at will but am not required to be surrounded by it at all times. A world where, while I can enjoy all walks of life and all different skin tones, I can still have a place of “My People” to call a refuge. Holy Shit… I get why Immigrant Communities start up the way they do now. People surrounded by “the foreign” (even if they chose to come to it) but still desperately need connection to the familiar.

And in case it wasn’t clear from yesterday?
Damn Google Translate: “The total number of humanities and social sciences in colleges and universities won the award, for the third consecutive year in the top 10 colleges and universities nationwide. Hubei Province Social Science Outstanding Achievement Award won five consecutive Hubei University before the two. In the field of natural sciences, it has achieved breakthroughs in 973 project chiefs, national innovation groups and national research bases, and has published more than 3,000 SCI papers in total and published over 30 papers in high-level representative journals such as Science, PNAS, PRL and JACS.”

And now for something completely different…

I… cannot wait to start focusing hardcore on getting back into shape and getting through the first several weeks of “OW, HOLY SHIT. THIS IS WHY I DON’T EXERCISE!” Because… that is the deal. It has been fun talking to other Fibro people because we almost all have this same mantra “There is a lot of pain. Apparently, exercise will help with the pain. But when I exercise the pain gets worse and it take forever to recover. So… what the hell?”

And I know that will be me. (I’m 5‘7 btw) I will be in excruciating, possibly debilitating pain for the first month at least… but ME isn’t 230 lbs. ME is, at most 180. Preferably between 150 and 170. And I want to get back to that. Though… pills, fibro… weight gain is “expected.” Wife is confident that at least 30 lbs will shed off easily when I’m out of work as she believes my enhanced cortisol levels have influenced my weight significantly. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she isn’t. But I’ve been eating a lot healthier… and no weight loss. I’ve removed alcohol and soda binges COMPLETELY from my diet… and no weight loss. So… yeah. I’m really hoping I’ll see some positive gains (ha, little joke there) when I can exercise more and won’t have this job stress. Because seriously… I was under 120 lbs up until Sophomore Year of College. Between Sophomore Year and Graduation (when I was first diagnosed and medicated), I went to about 160 lbs. Between graduation and law school, I was up to 200 lbs. But I didn’t go up to 230 until I took this job. And I don’t want to get back to 120. That would kill me. And Wife said I was underweight and way too thin. According to BMI, it isn’t underweight but it is damned close. I just want to get back to 160. Fingers crossed, eyes closed, goal internalized.

That being said… I am looking forward to my life having more to it than work, sleep, pain, and exhaustion. I mean… in my present life I have Wife (who you hear about) and Dragon Lance… but as I so desperately need rest, even if Dragon Lance is great… I am dead for the whole week after a game. Because if I don’t spend (while working) all of Saturday and/or Sunday recuperating… I pay for it during the weekdays. So I’m looking forward to either finding more energy or using my energy more wisely. Because… seriously… cannot say this enough… stressing out about trying to search through Chinese Language bullshit when I don’t speak the language? That effects a person. And I don’t need that in my life.

I shared this on Facebook but… especially of late… this seems particularly pertinent:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-bitter-truth-about-fighting-chronic-pain-without-opioids/
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Aaaaand…
my rage is back. Not sure why. Thinking it kicked in to stave off pain? Maybe. Hopefully. It has been a while since Random Rage was part of my existence… but it often happens during the change from Summer to Fall or Winter to Spring. So if it isn’t pain/body related… it is certainly weather related.

HA! So… this is awkward to discuss. I’ll throw out all the facts, do with them what you will.
When I was working Pretrial there was a girl. Not the one I referred to as Work Crush. A different one. She was gregarious, VERY talkative, and not shy about speaking on any subject. She felt flirty. My inner reaction to her? Complicated and conflicted. I was interested romantically and sexually. But I was terrified. Not because I was married. Honestly. It was something else. Something like… this woman reminded me of Buffy (old friend) and Aku (psycho ex) somehow sharing the same existence. It was… very unsettling. So… keep that in mind. Someone I know… found attractive… but was unsettled by.

I am on Match.com. Yes, I’m married and no I am not looking to cheat. I’m on Match.com in large part for MBFITWW. I like playing a game with him called “Build your vision, give me your limitations.” It is very similar to a game I played with my elementary school best friend, Danny. Back then, we’d build in our minds what our perfect woman was. More than “rack and great hair.” Stuff like… interested in Video Games… comfortable with camping… well-read… like actual, real stuff. So when MBFITWW comes over, who has a super hard time meeting anyone… I ask… “Would you want someone just around where you live or throughout the whole state?” Throughout the whole state answer means we use my Zip Code to search (as we are Central Iowa); where he lives means his zip code. “Okay, realistically, what age range are we thinking?” In other words, I ask him to fill in the Search Bar for Match.com. Then I show him who pops up. If there are any women he would approve of, we figure out if she is nearby (us or him). If there are multiple, I use it as an avenue to encourage him to sign up. Eventually (legitimately) when he is over someday, Wife and I will pay for his membership for him and help him build a profile. As I like to say… my cute, compassionate, wealthy cousin found her husband that way. His friends forced him to build a dating profile.

So randomly, just for fun, I decided to see how narrowly specific I could get and still find real live humans.
Age Range: 28-34
Interests Sports: Billiards, Tennis, Swimming
Interests Hobbies: Video Games, Movies, Books
Interests Pets: Must like dogs
Looks: Slender, Athletic, About Average
Hair Color: Black or Red
Eye Color: Blue or Green
Height: 4‘5 to 6‘0
Lifestyle: Non-Smoker that Drinks Alcohol and makes over $30k a year.

Using my zip code… anyone like that within 50 miles? No. 100 miles? No. 150 Miles? No. 200 Miles? 2 Matches. One of them was the girl I knew at Pretrial!! So… putting in “silly ideals into a Match making algorithm” produced someone I knew… and may have had a chance with if I wasn’t married… but who I found ineffably unsettling. Strange.

Everyone have a good weekend!