20 Years And Counting

On September 20, 1995, I sat in the mostly empty office I had just rented. I didn’t have a thing. No furniture. No computer.  The telephone was not even connected (remember: no cell phones back then.) My client count was an easy to remember zero. I had just left a very high-volume law firm that advertised on every flat surface in town. The phones rang there about every two seconds. The only speed was 100 miles an hour.  Now I was sitting in a place quieter than a cemetery at three in the morning. I eventually got the telephone turned on, but no one was calling. I checked the mail every day, even though I could have checked in once a month and stayed up to date. Over the coming years I proceeded to make every sort of business mistake possible. But, in spite of myself, I just kept showing up for work. Somewhere along the line, the gears stopped grinding. I figured out what I was doing and got pretty good at it.  I am not one to dwell on accomplishments, but opening a business and keeping it open for twenty years is not too bad. I know I don’t have another twenty years in me to practice law. My mental energy is not what it was all those years ago. But, until I do close the doors one fine day, I hope to keep helping people any way  I can.