Minor me update

After failing to think of a single blogworthy thing in my life when firing up the ol' browser window for yesterday's post, I came up with a few small items. For the sake of breaking out of a non-blogging period, here they are:

1. Commuting. I recently switched from a driving commute to a public transit commute. I thought I'd miss driving, but so far I like the T commute even though it's a lot longer. I get to zone out, or get work done if I'm so inclined, and get more outside time (which may not be so much fun come winter). If I have a few extra minutes on my way in, I can replace the last leg of my subway commute with a nice walk through the city and over the harbor.

The main downside is that dropoff is a pain. The other day X insisted on walking to school and then would not budge, no matter how much I cajoled and threatened and tried to physically pick him up and haul him to daycare (he FINALLY ran, but in the opposite direction). Never underestimate the power of a stubborn toddler. It took us half an hour to walk about 1/3 of a mile. Then I got K on the bus with me to go to camp and the driver missed our stop. We arrived late and wandered around for a while before finding anyone. Two hours after leaving home, I walked into my office. Anyway, camp is only four weeks.

2. Work. I've been supervising junior associates more. I now know how it feels to be the one giving the assignments. Among other things, I have a much better idea of the importance of regular communication and status updates, and why when I was a junior associate, partners would give me the tiniest edits to make on documents when it would have been much easier for them to just fix it themselves. And I understand the value of having someone you can trust to go off and do something correctly and seek appropriate supervision. Also, the junior associates are eager to do things that I find really boring, like anything to do with securities and corporate governance. (You know, the stuff that corporate lawyers do.)

3. Running. For a month or two now I've been waking up early to go running. At first I'd just go for short runs around the neighborhood. Then, mainly due to late nights at work, I'd wake up later and later and my runs would get more and more half-assed. Like, I'd only have 15 minutes before the kids woke up and I would jog halfway around the block and walk the rest and call it a day. Recently I started driving over to a local park where I run a loop around a reservoir surrounded by forest. It adds a little time, but now I actually enjoy waking up early and going for a run.

4. Yoga. I've also been doing a 30 day yoga challenge and loving it. It's only about 15 minutes a day and has been a gentle but effective reintroduction to yoga. After not doing it for a while, it always seems daunting to start up again but it's so worth it. It's the only thing that consistently helps with my chronic wrist problems.

5. Nonprofit. I am now (well, officially as of next week) the president of the local nonprofit whose board I joined a few years ago. Turns out that if there is no money or prestige associated with a position, all you have to do is show up and do stuff and you will be pushed into taking over. I resisted the new commitment at first, but I do care about the organization and enjoy being involved. So I ended up accepting, and was surprised at how quickly I switched over to thinking strategically instead of just working on discrete projects. I think it'll be good.