We think we do a decent job. We get up, get our coffee, get our kids off to school (hopefully with minimal long term damage to their psyche) and then head off to work ourselves. There, we sit at our desks and computers and we toil away. Maybe we make some calls or answer a bunch of emails and we meet clients or have lunch. We make more coffee and play on twitter or facebook and mull writing some blog posts. We email and text our friends and find funny e-cards to distribute far and wide.

And all the while thinking what good, decent people are we. How well we do by those we claim to love and those we claim to work for. And all the while thinking how lucky the world is to have us in it.

Look, I don’t really know you and you don’t actually know me, even though you think you do from reading this blog where I let you know the things that I let you know. If I know you in real life or online it is the same – we’ve only let each other see the parts that we want shown. It’s all faulty and fake advertising, the stuff we put on our webpage “Success stories: Case Dismissed! Not Guilty on First Degree Murder! Stet on Home Invasion!” We don’t tell people that we lost hearings and trials we probably shouldn’t have. We don’t advertise “Hey, I will do these hearings and trials if you want me to but I normally lose in these situations.” I mean, come on, who does that? And so you see my photoshopped image everywhere. Look at me! I look so young and vibrant. Look at me! Don’t I look like I am doing a decent job?

Back when I was writing more regularly I would get people who would email me. They would tell me they felt like they knew me because of the things I wrote but how could that be when, on a good stretch, I would write maybe once a day. I mean, I’m sorry but a LOT OF SHIT HAPPENS TO ME IN A DAY. There is no way I am telling you everything. There is no way I am telling you even a decent portion of things. And more importantly, how do you know I am even telling you the truth (well, I am telling you the truth, who would make this dumb stuff up?). In these days in between posts, in the months in between I have been living my life and it has gone not so great at times. I was not doing a decent job and I was so busy shouting from the rooftops how great this job was, how difficult yet how much nobility there was wrapped up in it. In the months and days in between posts I have been thinking if this is true or if I made it out that way in order to justify my existence. I mean, how can you do this job if it isn’t noble? How can you do it if you feel nothing but sadness and hopelessness for the human race? How do you get clients if you say that maybe some people are nothing more than the sum of their worst days? And there were days when that is what I wanted to say. I wanted to say “hey client, that wasn’t my fault. It was yours.” And I wanted to say “Hey judge why did you not listen to me? I was right. You are a dummy.” But those are not real things. They are feelings that pass but the effects of writing them are long lasting.  I do not want clients to lose faith in me because I have a bad day. I do not want judges to think I am difficult to work with. These are the fears of my days and months in between posts.

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You, faithful reader, you know there is always a point to these posts even though I frequently take the long way to them. I mean, I have an unlimited number of words in this essay, why not use them? My point is this – in the days in between the words you say to the world, in the hours that pass are you simply convincing yourself that your work on this planet is good enough or are you actually making it good enough? You see, what I am trying to say is that I am working on actually making it good enough. And it is a very long, very hard road. Because it is easy to say “Hark! I am lawyer of the downtrodden and betrayed and lonely!”

It is much more difficult to actually know your place in the world and to realize how lucky we are to be in it.