The Difference a Year Makes

Total Black: $115.36
Total Red: $230,281.21

It was a Tuesday morning.  I was still at home.  Typically, as I quickly learned to do, I’d check my blackberry upon waking and then a few times more throughout the morning before leaving for work.  I lived in Brooklyn then, in the Clinton Hill area, and so it took roughly forty-five minutes to get to Midtown and all manner of emails and voice mails could have transpired during that commute.  At least by checking before submerging, I’d have narrowed my chances of missing something.  This morning I had gotten up late and hadn’t bothered checking my blackberry.  When I finally did, I noticed a voice mail message waiting for me from a partner I wasn’t working with and with whom I hadn’t had much contact.  It meant one of two things: a new assignment or the ax had fallen.  It was the latter and I had four days to untangle my life from the firm, wrap up the matters I had been working on, and leave the firm for good.

That was a year ago today.