Burnout in law isn't from working hard. It's from working hard on things you never chose. Agency is the whole game. Build something you'd want to show up to.
Pastor, someone walking into your service today is barely holding on by a thread. Preach as if their life depends on the hope only Jesus gives, because it does.
Insurance minimums for motor carriers has not moved beyond $750k set in 1985.
Just to keep up with CPI inflation, it should be 2 million. To match medical inflation, it should be closer to $3.5m
Trying to reconcile the fact that I don't want to be a lawyer anymore with the fact that I will have to be a lawyer for the rest of my life to live the lifestyle I want
Thirty-one days of going through the motions of ordinary life while carrying something that made ordinary life feel pointless... like it was over.
And then.
The genetic testing proved the lab wrong.
He did not have X-ALD.
The lab had made an error.
A result that was wrong, delivered with complete confidence, that sent our family into a month of grief that never should have happened.
I don’t have a good way to describe what that reversal felt like either.
Relief doesn’t cover it.
Gratitude doesn’t cover it.
A lot of disbelief but a feeling like I was given a second chance at life.
I wasn’t angry. I promised God I wouldn’t be in our many conversations that month and I felt strongly I had to honor that. Frankly, I was scared not to.
What the further testing confirmed was that the Doose Syndrome diagnosis was correct. Serious. Real.
Something we manage carefully and watch closely.
But not fatal. Not the abyss we had been staring into.
Crazy how the perspective shifted…
And thankfully he has been seizure-free since 2022 with medication.
There is still activity on his EEGs. We watch it. We always will.
But today he is five years old.
He is healthy. He is happy.
He is everything.
Here is what those thirty-one days taught me that nothing else could have:
Almost nothing you are worried about right now actually matters.
Not the deal that might fall through. Not the money or the status or the thing that kept you up last night that you will not even remember in six months.
None of it.
The only things that matter are the people in your house.
Their health.
Your presence with them.
The ordinary Tuesday morning where nothing remarkable happens except that everyone wakes up and nobody is sick and you get to drive them to school.
I believed this intellectually before the summer of 2022.
After thirty-one days in those woods, I believed it in my bones.
My son does not know this story yet. He is five. He is busy being five.
But someday he will read it.
And I want him to know that those thirty-one days were the days that finally taught me what I was actually living for.
It was always for him.
Happy birthday, buddy.
Love you more than anything in this world.