My Year of Yes

Did you ever wake up to find

A day that broke up your mind?

Destroyed your notion of circular time?

Today is the day. After 30 consecutive years of practicing law, I am, depending on how you look at it, either unemployed or underemployed. No office to go to. No need for a suit except for weddings, funerals and coronations.

No lunch break, either – now, if I want, it’s all lunch break.

But while we have enough to get by barring some unforeseen disaster, we still need to earn some dough to avoid living in a refrigerator box and eating cat food. Thus, I will be working, but finally doing the things that I really want to do: fishing, traveling and writing about fishing and traveling.

And that will require a shift. My writing career has given me an immense amount of joy and satisfaction, but it has always had to take a back seat to everything else. I was unwilling to give up the security that I’d built through hard work in other arenas. That in turn meant making sacrifices. I’ve become a master of shifting schedules and maximizing vacation time in order to cover events and travel to great places, but it has frequently meant making difficult choices and saying NO more than YES.

Invited to a midweek media event? Probably going to decline. Random emails for all-expenses paid trips to Belize or Baja or Bozeman? They’ve all come in, and I’ve regretfully said no. Now I have to hope that: (a) the industry hasn’t changed in a way that reduces the number of these opportunities; and (b) that all of these years of saying no hasn’t led certain people to write me off.

Obviously, I will still have to say no on occasion. I may not want to do something, or it may not be cost-effective, or there may already be something on my calendar. But to the extent that it’s feasible I’m going to lean outside of my comfort zone and try to say yes as often as possible, ideally not just in terms of the things I’ve long dreamed of doing, but also taking some risks in new areas both substantively and geographically. Many of my greatest accomplishments and relationships in life have developed as a result of being there – in the right place at the right time – something that cannot be equally accomplished while sitting at a desk. “Almost Famous” is one of my favorite movies, and I use it as something of a guidepost: I want to get on the bus with Stillwater.

Oddly enough, I hope some of my efforts lead to occasional slight failures, too. In the past when I’ve elected to go on a trip and it didn’t live up to expectations, I lived with a great sense of regret. The opportunity cost of choosing that time away instead of something else was substantial. Now, I have more room to freestyle. Even the failures will be experiences to build upon.

I’ll reassess at midyear to see if things are going according to plan, and if I haven’t been at least a little bit uncomfortable and had a few adventures and misadventures along the way, I’ll have to ramp it up. Please hold me accountable.