Professional Navel-Gazing

Since returning from the sabbatical, I've kept my law practice relatively slow.  And I've enjoyed it.  I've avoided marketing or going on a blitz to increase my workload, and instead, I've been doing lots of cooking, reading, gardening, and ramping up my workouts, and plenty of adulting like medical/dental/family stuff, filing/culling, finances/taxes, etc. that I'd completely ignored on the sabbatical (and typically only handled when it was on fire back when my practice was more busy).

I finally made it to the local Din Tai Fung.  

Delicious & only a 15 minute wait for lunch at 1:30 on a Friday!

Because I'm not super busy, I'm not earning as much money as I usually do.  This means that options that historically haven't been attractive to me because they'd require a pay cut are actually worth thinking about.

I wouldn't have realized this, except a local company reached out and tried to hire me for an in-house position.  And I was actually interested.  I prepared a resume for the first time in 12 years.  It felt good to look at a list of all that I've accomplished professionally since I last tried to get hired.  Ultimately, the job was not a good fit -- the job description was a little aspirational -- describing what the hiring manager would love for the role to evolve into at some point in the future rather than a true description of what the job actually would be on day 1.  There were a couple of other issues that made it not a great option for me as well, but it was fun to get a sense of how desirable my skill set is in a corporate environment after 8 years of being on my own.

First time I've been able to put in a winter garden in years!

That same week, a law firm reached out to see if I'd like to consider joining them as a partner.  This is not an uncommon occurrence.  It has typically happened once or twice a year since I've been on my own.  I usually do the math and it doesn't make sense and we part on good terms.  But, as I mentioned, I'm in a unique spot right now, so I'm talking to them next week.

After agreeing to speak with the law firm, I realized I should probably explore my options more fully if that's what I'm doing.  So, I spoke with a recruiter who I put on hold 'til next week and reached out to a firm I'd turned down in the past but really liked to set up a chat with them.

Time to research recipes led me to brown rice straciatella -- so good! 

This is going to be a regular in the soup rotation.

I'm not really sure where, if anywhere, any of this is going.  But I'm meeting new people and exploring possibilities and in doing so reminding myself of some of the things I love about how my life is currently structured that I'd lose if I chose to ramp up my practice to a more busy situation or chose a different path.