The past two months have been surreal and, frankly, hard. Time is a blur. Conversations have migrated from solidarity, support, and concern for safety to thorny and emotionally charged discussions about reopening protocols, when masks should be required, and how to effectuate widescale temperature checks. Children everywhere have morphed into small tornadoes of energy with few outlets, either physical or emotional, to keep them (or us) grounded. And all of this seems likely to continue even with the soft openings we’re starting to see around the country. I think most of us just try not to think about it too much.
So yeah, things are heavy. But life’s not all bad, and I’d like to take some time this week to dwell on the positives that have come out of all of this stress and heartache. None of it comes close to outweighing the losses we’ve experienced, but it’s when we’re at our lowest that we owe it to ourselves to work hard to find the good.
Family First
It starts with the people we’re sharing this pandemic with. Most attorneys work long hours. We spend time away from our families more often than we’d like, sometimes as a matter of course. The past year has been particularly taxing for me from a work perspective. I often told my wife and kids how much I missed them and wished I could spend more time at home.
I wish it hadn’t taken a pandemic, but I’ve gotten to spend more time with my family in the past two months than in years, and I’ve gotten to experience life with them in ways I never would have otherwise. Like most school-aged children, my kids finished up their year taking classes online and via Zoom. I’ve seen my kids do homework and sat and worked with them on any number of assignments, but I’ve never had the opportunity to see them sit and learn from their teacher. I’ve had the chance to watch my kids process the world around them and observe how they absorb information, and it’s been special to see. I wouldn’t have gotten that chance but for COVID-19.
I’ve also been forcibly reminded lately of the benefits of intentionality and solitude. Attorneys usually have to keep lots of plates spinning, and that often means our days are spent bouncing from one task or conversation to another. People used to pop into my office or grab me in the halls constantly to get my take on a subject, or ask me to put out a fire, or just say hello. I love and miss the spontaneity and closeness that facilitates, but working at home from my office has provided me opportunities for focus and deep thought that I didn’t realize I was missing.
Talking Less, Hearing More
I’m not sure when, but at some point I think I forgot what quiet sounded like. Coronavirus has forced me to be more intentional about conversing with my team and to spend more time in solitude focusing deeply on projects in a way I haven’t been able to in a long, long time. It’s not necessarily better, but it’s a good kind of different. It’s helping me strike a balance, fill a need I didn’t realize was there. Work calls still come in, the kids still need to be pulled off each other, my wife still needs help with the 19,000 jobs she performs every hour, but for a few periods every day, I get to just sit in my own brain and work. It’s kind of glorious.
Like the rest of the working world, I’ve developed a complicated relationship with Zoom meetings. Videoconferencing has been critical during this time, and I give big kudos to Zoom for creating the gold standard for the technology. But it’s still videoconferencing. I’ve lost track of the times my screen has frozen from maxed-out broadband. People are growing tired of muting, unmuting, toggling cameras on and off, hitting the “raise hand” button, and going into break-out rooms just to converse. We’ve cycled through most of the comical backgrounds a time or two. The novelty has long worn off for most, and the cultural backlash has begun.
But I’m here to talk positives, and so I’d like to sing one specific praise of the Zoom meeting: face-to-face interaction. My firm is spread across six offices in multiple states, and I’ve probably spent years of my life in large conference rooms video-chatting with other large conference rooms elsewhere. No one can really see or hear one another that well, and so apart from the people sitting immediately around you, it’s not an experience that really brings people together. With Zoom from home, however, everyone’s face is right there. We’re all splotchy, underlit, and at unflattering angles, but we’re looking in one another’s eyes, seeing emotions and reactions flitting across each other’s faces. The interactions I’m having with teammates in other offices are the best, most human ones I’ve had over a videoconference in my career. I feel closer to those offices now than I did before.
What A Wonderful World
I’m also astonished daily by the creativity and resourcefulness this crisis has brought out in my colleagues and teammates. Amid all the chaos and uncertainty, I’ve seen innovation in how my firm communicates, how it markets itself, and how it gets work done. I’ve been approached with business development ideas that not only work around the challenges of coronavirus, but that turn those challenges into selling points and advantages. Our industry is about taking care of others’ needs, providing them advice, guidance, and help during challenging times, and the people I work with have taken that up as a call to arms.
At the end of a recent all-hands Zoom meeting, a partner’s 8-year-old son closed the meeting out by playing “What a Wonderful World” on his ukulele. I scanned the faces of the people in attendance, and saw people being moved. I saw tears, and smiles, at this performance that would never have happened were we not all trapped in our homes, fighting this pandemic.
The past two months have seen tremendous pain, heartache, and loss, but they have not been without hope. We will continue to get through this time in our lives, and we’ll do it because we have one another. Go find your silver linings. We need them now more than ever.
James Goodnow is an attorney, commentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the managing partner of NLJ 250 firm Fennemore Craig. He is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management new release category. As a practitioner, he and his colleagues created a tech-based plaintiffs’ practice and business model. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.