Saturday Open Thread - 11/22/25: Odds and Ends
Good morning, good people!
We have a couple of folks on the site that are sorta, kinda, being forced into a retirement they had not exactly planned. Usefewersyllables, iirc, commented about a job being one's identity. I can relate.
I am one month into my 40th year practicing law. My driving desires were to help end the death penalty, and to be my own boss. My practice branched out into certain civil practice areas, and shaped itself according to the needs of the community, and my need to support myself. I am not that lucky child of rich parents.
My 2 best friends in the biz are a tad older than me, and the 3 of us talk about walking away.
The oldest is a guy who has health issues. His family and friends want him to just come home. He resists because he is a lawyer, that is what he is, what he does. Nothing else. I firmly believe he fights his health problems because he has clients to take care of, and if that was not the case, he would curl up and die. He got lucky, represented his brother in a truck/auto collision case and became a millionaire. The woman pal was fortunate to inherit a small fortune, but unfortunate enough to find herself in a community where all her friends are dead, and her beloved husband died. If she retires, she goes home to absolutely nothing and nobody.
My situation is different from theirs in that I always did business in a poor county for low prices, and while my retirement stash is sufficient today, but I worry constantly about inflation, and what my monthly budget might look like in a year, or two years. Right at the time I was able to sock away maximum $ into savings, here comes COVID. The local economy has not recovered and will not ever be the same.
To add to the problem is location. My home is in a rural area. A marauding gang could wipe me and mine out in minutes. For those of you who are not really bothered by illegal immigrants, my situation is very different. This area in East and Southeast Texas is inundated with cartels. If I sell or lease my office, located beside the courthouse, 2 blocks from the Sheriff's office, I can't go there if this place gets really dangerous. It could happen. And I might decide to open up my practice post-retirement.
My head splits open with these problems, but the REAL problem is what usefewersyllables was addressing.
Identity. Lawyers are 24/7 under the guns. We don't get to escape it. We sign up for it. Everything we do or say is held accountable. We signed up for it. We are proud of it. We studied, we tested, we committed to it, and my old pal is right. He is nothing and nobody unless he is a lawyer, because most of his life that is who he is.
Me, too.
Anyway, walking away from work, which is what we do in this country, when not forced, is not always the relief from being under the thumb of "the man" as it is being old and helpless at the mercy of another "man".
I fervently hope all of you are prepared for that final phase in this life.
Meanwhile, lots of stuff and things are happening all over the world, and whatever info you find that is interesting, please share with your friends here on the site.
This is an open thread, open to all kinds of info, ideas, and the gestures of friendship.
Your turn!
Comments
Let 'er rip!
You know you wanna do it...
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Hey, good morning
.
Slow walking away from a career
(or a lifetime) of striving has its challenges.
The new 'reality', as you pointed out, is encumbered with
physical and mental issues which require a skill set not
necessarily developed during said career or lifetime.
Guess we make it up as we go along. Personally think we
are more than what we identify with. I mean yeah, I have been
a boat captain most of my life. Part of that stays with you after
throwing the last line on the dock. The ship of life continues.
Thanks for the thoughts and tunes chica!
Rainy day here. Working on a jigsaw puzzle of
Puerto Vallarta to keep insanity at bay.
Zionism is a social disease
Good morning, Cap'n!
I applaud your excursions into learning, through local groups and clubs, new or improving on current skills. You are navigating uncharted waters, Cap'n. Land, ho!
To add to my other concerns, the State Bar of Texas is offering assistance, courses, classes, all about retiring or managing your practice if you get sick or injured. I see something about it almost daily, like something is going on. I see warnings about the duty to keep up with new technology in order to comport with our professional ethics. My pals and I believe it is a concerted effort to push us out and usher in the young tech wiz kids. Almost all live, in person mandatory Continuing Legal Education classes are sponsored by some company selling AI programs. I have gotten CLE attendance credit for required hours, which are reported yearly, taught by non-lawyer tech guys. Large firms are being taught how to incorporate and capitalize on new clients that have done their own AI research before hiring said firm. So, capitalize on the amateurish research, don't argue with it. (I show a prospective client the door when I see their AI trash.)
Well, for now, I love going to work.
We shall see.
Enjoy your weekend, dear friend!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Caitlin has a good one up
.
.
a sampling ..
OpenAI reportedly plans on building 250 gigawatts of capacity by 2033 to use for its energy-consuming servers, about the same amount of electricity that’s used by 1.5 billion people in India.
So, no. No to this. Your right to extend your fist ends at my nose. You don’t get to just add this giant burden to the already severely overburdened ecosystem we all depend on for survival in order to expand your chatbot project. The collective is entitled to stop you. By force.
my bold
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-moved-gazas-yellow-line-and?utm_s...
Zionism is a social disease
Because of AI energy needs...
...the elite are no longer concerned with climate change and the green agenda. All they ever wanted is "more for me", and they will flip flop around to maximize their profits.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Ya know, Cap'n,
the incongruity of the rich and ardent proponents of climate change and what they do, and what they insist the rest of us do (and accept without question), is the driver of climate change denial.
I am shamed for bathing too often, buying (and washing) too many clothes, eating beef, and driving, by rich folks flying on private jets to fashion shows in Milan, dining on exquisite beef-laden meals.
I cannot name one wealthy climate change advocate who practices what he/she preaches.
I remember blog commenters arguing about the virtues of hanging clothes to dry vs. using a dryer. Uh, how is that an option for apartment or condo dwellers?
Don't kill trees advocated by a group that had roads constructed, thousands of acres of rain forest destroyed, to have that special place to have their meaningful climate change summit in Brazil.
Good for me, not for thee, is unpersuasive in the long run.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
When I retired from teaching...
...it wasn't because I was tired of students, but sick of self serving administrators. I have enjoyed my retirement, but know many who either die soon afterward or don't know how to entertain themselves.
It drizzled this AM at Trade day, but now the sun is out and sky's are blue. Lots of errands today after trade day - Trash and recycling, bank ATM withdrawal for the week's cash, groceries, and non-ethanol gas for the the tractor and small motors. Non-ethanol runs a little over $3/gal, but saves on motor maintenance.
Sounds to me, from your stories, you still enjoy being an attorney. As long as you are enjoying your profession, I say go for it.
Well take care, and thanks for the OT!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Absolutely
.
if it feels good, do it.
Till you can't. Then ..
Zionism is a social disease
Good morning, Cap'n!
I applaud your excursions into learning, through local groups and clubs, new or improving on current skills. You are navigating uncharted waters, Cap'n. Land, ho!
To add to my other concerns, the State Bar of Texas is offering assistance, courses, classes, all about retiring or managing your practice if you get sick or injured. I see something about it almost daily, like something is going on. I see warnings about the duty to keep up with new technology in order to comport with our professional ethics. My pals and I believe it is a concerted effort to push us out and usher in the young tech wiz kids. Almost all live, in person mandatory Continuing Legal Education classes are sponsored by some company selling AI programs. I have gotten CLE attendance credit for required hours, which are reported yearly, taught by non-lawyer tech guys. Large firms are being taught how to incorporate and capitalize on new clients that have done their own AI research before hiring said firm. So, capitalize on the amateurish research, don't argue with it. (I show a prospective client the door when I see their AI trash.)
Well, for now, I love going to work.
We shall see.
Enjoy your weekend, dear friend!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Hasn't this been around for a while?
"I have gotten CLE attendance credit for required hours, which are reported yearly, taught by non-lawyer tech guys. "
Years and years ago I got roped into helping a client put together a presentation. Had worked with colleagues of the woman but didn't actually know her. She planned to handle most of the presentation and only needed me for a small component outside her area of expertise. Only after I was formally listed as a presenter did I discover that attendees would get CLE credit. That she expected me to put together handouts at my employer's expense. Became concerned when we met to go over the presentation and she blew it off as something she could wing. Still, my piece was small (and as I rarely gave formal speeches, I wrote mine out and made notes).
We met up an hour before the event to go over last minute plans. It was at an elegant Beverly Hills resort/hotel. She and her sidekick were in the bar when I got there. Drinking at 11:00 AM. That's when a recalled a rumor that she had a drinking problem. But this was her deal and I was no more than a sideshow.
The slowly developing nightmare sped up when she delivered her thirty minute speech in five minutes. It was incomprehensible even for someone like me that knew the business. Somehow I managed to expand my five minutes into twenty and handled the questions for both parts. (The handouts were well received.) (iirc she and her sidekick then went back to the bar. I never spoke to her again.)
Good morning, LO!
In a sense, your homestead is your laboratory, and every day of your life you are doing all the things you taught. You transitioned from classroom to field and forest. You have more time for your music making, so there is just no downside, and you left the crappy administrators in the dust.
I may get outside and do a bit of fence line clearing. The forecast of heavy rains, storms, and temperature drop did not happen. It is a tee shirt and shorts day in the warm sun. If I had a horse, I'd be off in the woods and on the trails, but I will just make do with many memories of such fun.
Enjoy your weekend, my great friend!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Not sure our noses are pointed
.
in the right direction
but can understand your need
to remain relevant in this 'late' stage
of life. The challenges abound.
Good luck.
Zionism is a social disease
Oh, man. It really is
a quandary. When you have invested the vast majority of your adult life into the single-minded pursuit of a profession, largely to the exclusion of everything else in life, seeing the end of the line is daunting- and having it forced upon you is downright shattering.
Many professions, like medicine and the law, have semi-built-in mechanisms to encourage practitioners to stay current with the latest developments in the field. While brutal, this is wise in a professional sense, because it allows practitioners to allocate their time appropriately and in somewhat organized ways: there is a structure there.
For engineers, and especially for a silicon-jockey like me, there is no such mechanism. The field is run by the golden devil-take-the-hindmost rule: you have to keep yourself as current as humanly possible, on your own time. And in recent decades, the pace of obsolescense of entire technologies has accelerated- exactly according to Moore's Law. Keeping up with that development pace is agonizing: even if I don't intend to do design work at the 3 nanometer process node for semiconductors, I damned well have to stay fully abreast of it, just in case being able to demonstrate knowledge of it becomes nonoptional for that whole making-a-living thing.
To an extent, it is even worse if one decides to become a consultant: your advice absolutely has to be based upon the current state of the art. My first designs (albeit, not in a professional setting) were with vacuum tubes, back at the very beginning of the integrated-circuit era in the early 70s. Then, discrete transistors, but not for long- when I was still in college, Gary Boone and his crew at TI did the 4004 microprocessor (well before the Intel pukes did theirs, BTW), and discrete design (as well as the use of a slide rule) essentially died on the spot. My first chip design was in 5 micron NMOS, a process that was immediately obsoleted by the common intruduction of CMOS for ICs. My next was 2 micron CMOS, and my most recent efforts have been at the 90 nanometer node, which has now been relegated to a historical footnote in the dustbin of the 20th century.
Boone was my career mentor, and I'm eternally grateful to have known him- and still devastated by his loss, to this day. He passed due to Lewy Body dementia, and it was agonizing to see him wrestle with it. He is one of those souls who either would or could not reinvent himself. And when he could no longer do it at the level he had reached, it very rapidly killed him: much more so than the disease itself.
I have apparently reached the point where people think that I should be retired, for my own good. What the hell is that? Who in their right mind would have the sheer effrontery to tell me what I'm allowed to to with my brain, while it is still working at all? Sure, my short-term memory is trash, my balance stinks, I'm still throwing TIAs despite being anticoagulated into hæmophilia- but I'm still productive, dammit. Thus, my point: In my mind, I'm still relevant. But perhaps I no longer am, to my employer or potential customers.
They say that fear is the mind-killer. I would say that irrelevance is the mind-killer. And if your professional life has centered around the use of your mind, while your physical carcass has withered from age and inattention, then you certainly face a real decision point, when suddenly you perceive that the door is closing behind you.
I'm at that point now. At least I have a period of a few months to make those decisions. If I intend to ramp my consulting practice back up, the treadmill-requirement of continuing knowledge of these technologies is still grinding along, and there is no way off of it. And I'm now 10 years down a corporate wage-slave rabbithole, which means that the folks that used to hire me in the patent field have all retired or died. So it'd be a complete start-from-scratch effort. But if I just call it a career and decide not to rehang my shingle, what then?
What then, indeed. "Home is the sailor, home from the sea; and the hunter, home from the hill"... It's altogether too likely for for folks like me.
At least I'll have more mental energy left over at the end of the day to love on my long-suffering wife, who has spent so much of her mental energy for the last 3-plus decades in keeping going the singlethreaded monster that is I. But the next chapter will require a complete mental reinvention. Complete. It is very much akin to developing a new character that one intends to perform 24/7 for the rest of one's life. No wonder it is daunting.
Ahh, well- enough manic-depressive ramblings for the day. I'm currently working the big batch of sourdough for our little celebration, so that pleasant task calls. Actually, come to think of it- I'm also writing a punk rock protest tune in A minor right now, based upon a theme from Beethoven. I've decided to title it "Für Autolyse"... (;-)
Be safe out there!
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
complete mental reinvention
.
thinking that is wise
although can not focus enough
to grasp the steps in so being
creative thought process requires
a particular mind-set. Seems to come and go,
not something to depend upon on a regular basis.
BTW, good on your spouse to support your meanderings.
Wish I had that added boost.
Good luck.
Zionism is a social disease
No kidding.
I wish that my dear departed grey-haired mammy had seen fit to keep the owner's manual for me around to give to me. Unfortunately, it seems to have been misplaced somehow after she took delivery- so I never got to see it. Woulda made a lotta things easier.
My wife's support has been invaluable, for sure. If she had not entered my life in my 30s, I wouldn't have made it to 40, let alone where I am now. Here's to all of the spouses who love on us, and keep us going, through thick and thin. I need to focus on making up for that lost time, and showing her far more support than I've been able to to date. That is a far more important activity than my career, and deserves far more of my energies.
My therapist gave me a great analogy just in the last few weeks, one that led to a true epiphany that I could never have achieved for myself (despite having been a video game designer for a time in my misspent past). It is brutally elegant in its simplicity:
In a well-designed video game, one needs to focus on the state of one's "life bar" or "health bar", more than the score one is racking up. I'm finally coming to internalize that. Doesn't matter if I get to enter my initials in the high-score table, if I'm essentially dead by dint of achieving said score.
Part of my reinvention is a refocusing of energies on health and especially love, not on racking the damned score up higher. Those days are in my past, and I need to use that as my forcing factor (in video game parlance, what makes you want to survive this level in the game to get to the next one). I need to recharge my life bar, all day/every day, and the score needs to take a distant back seat- as long as we can keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.
Many things are starting over, whether I like the process or not. I suppose that realizing that is a gift- but as the song goes, you know it don't come easy...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
All the eggs in one basket is risky
I lost more money over the past week than I've made working in one year for most of my life. Thankfully I found a feature called a "stop buy" where as soon as chip makers fell below a dollar amount my equities turned into a money market. So I'm entirely in interest now, I think just under 4%. I can't complain. Around 30% per year for 3 years is more than enough. I labor and have many injuries.
I still work a little, probably best to do a little so I still have a business.
For individuals supplanted by AI I'm sympathetic on a personal level. In the larger sense, I care about as much as the professional managerial class cares about the massive importation of illegal labor to suppress working class wages, or sending manufacturing to Mexico and China.
Both of my kids use AI extensively, as does everyone in STEM fields, or they will be replaced. AI makes people much more productive, but it does hallucinate. It's even more important that people know what they are doing. Professionals who do lose their jobs to AI an do all those things they told us to do. Retrain, learn to code, move, etc.
I haven't seen much use of AI on the consumer level. Radiologist read my Xray last week. Met with docs three times. Got drugs from a pharmacist who counted them out by hand. Architects cost a lot and aren't always any good, I'd think AI would be good there, also simple legal stuff, I'd like to set up a trust.