Sunday Morning Coffee….5 Days

5 January 2020

Sunday Morning Coffee….5 Days

Yesterday morning I went into my office to prepare the six cases I have to hear over the next five days.  No big deal there.  Since I entered private practice in the mid 1980s as an attorney, weekend work was to be expected.  Almost always somebody needed a pocket brief for a Monday hearing, or I was working on an important brief that required research time and quiet writing time. To help my clients accomplish what they wanted to do in my 15 or so years of private practice, required extra bits of effort like Saturday drafting.  Grunt and bang attorneys like me worked 55+ hours a week to bill 38-40 hours. 

As I sat there yesterday morning I realized that it was the last Saturday I would “have” to do legal weekend work.  In my job as an Adminstrative Law Examiner what I did on Saturdays was to number the exhibits in a file,  read the three to five letters contained in each file and to jot down some notes about what seemed important, or irregular, or very positive in the file.  I have a little template that I have worked from for years and it has a space called Additional Questions.  This would often be filled with things to be asked about what happened when someone lived out of state.  Michiganders are notorious for having hidden criminal records in Florida, Wisconsin and Arizona. Luckily all three of those states have very robust governmentally run public criminal history search tools. Thus, I frequently had additional questions.  Saturday was a good day to find this stuff.

I digress.  After doing some of my prep work yesterday, I went and got a cup of hot brown water, it is otherwise known as decaf coffee.  I picked up my iPhone and opened my Facebook application.  On my status I noted that this was the last Saturday I would be doing this.  As I puttered around yesterday I just thought of how many Saturdays I had surrender at least part of the day to work.  But it was not with anger, longing,  remorse or any other really emotional state that I noted it.  When you become a lawyer, unless you are totally ill advised going into and through law school, you realize that you will work yourself hard most all of your days in the profession.  You will work yourself so hard that I can list you dozen’s of names of people from my graduating class who let stress, bad eating and anger cut short their lives. 

What I posted was meant to be a neutral observation.  The response was anything but neutral. I was surprised at how many people told me I would find ways to fill my Saturday morning time, or that I was going to enjoy what was coming next,  The number of comments I received and the genuine warmth in those comments was pretty amazing.  I have been deeply touched.

Over the past week to 10 days a number of attorneys who have appeared in front of me have taken a few minutes at the end of their cases to talk with me.  These barristers have wished me the best and said good kind words about working with me. Trust me, some of these people have cursed my name as they walked out of my office. Understand the microphone was sometimes still on as they left the video conference room where their part of the hearing had been held, and I heard them state their challenges to my lineage and sexual predilections. But 99% of the people who have wished me well have done it with real warmth.  

My search for the right career took a bit of time.  I was not a good fit for most of the legal jobs I have held in this life.  I was not a rainmaker.  I was not the most keenly aware intellect arguing a Motion.  I have never been a sharp dresser.  But, when I found this job talking to people about addressing their issues with alcohol and drugs, it fit like a right sized leather glove.

No yesterday’s note was just a chronicle of what the day meant, the end of something, the end of a pattern of behavior.  But, it was meant to be emotionless.  This week will bring the emotions to top.  There are people I know I will miss.  Just as an example there are a cadre of folks in the program who come in and talk about how the person in front of me seeking the return of a license, is doing in recovery.  There are three gents from Charlotte, another couple from Lansing and one from St. John’s whose genial nature and commitment to recovery have always struck a chord with me.  I will miss them.  

There are attorneys I will miss.  To every attorney who tried to suck up to me by wearing a Jerry Garcia tie (it was once reported on a website describing my and other Hearing Officer’s styles and predilections that I was a big Jerry Garcia/Grateful Dead fan, I enjoyed seeing all your ties.  This point was correct as posted-thank you SADO for sharing.  It was also reported that I was a big Beatles fan, this was totally incorrect.  The latter misconception came from the fact there was a large book on my office bookshelf about the Beatles.  It, in 2003 dollars cost $40 new, but at the used bookstore where I bought it one year after it was published, the volume was $4.  I knew a big Beatles fan and it took me several holiday seasons before I got around to giving it to them. So attorneys coming in my office would see it and think, “Ah, I can riff with him about the Fab Four”.

What I will miss most are the people and the stories of their lives.  This includes the 20,000 + people I have seen hoping to get their licenses back.  This includes the dozens of clerical technical people I have gotten to know when I needed assistance in running video hearing equipment or when I needed answers to esoteric questions.  This includes  each of the many, many people from the branch office who I shared lunch and coffee breaks with.  I like people.  I like talking to people.  I will miss that part of my job incredibly.

If you want to ask me how I got here, just look up the word serendipity.  I never wanted to go to MSU.  I never wanted to be a lawyer.  (I wanted to be a librarian). I never wanted to work for a state government.  But here I am and each step of the trip has occurred mostly by accident.