Outside Counsel

"This American Life" last night was about "Plan B". The program started with Ira Glass describing a short story about a man who is laid off from a job he's had for over ten years. His boss tells him, "You'll have to go to Plan B." The guy says, "You don't understand-- this was Plan B". What made it interesting for me was that in a funny way, I'm still on Plan A-- it's just that it looks nothing like what I'd have thought it would. In KRAC Captain Tom Knab's useful phrase, I am closer to 50 than I am to 27. If you'd have asked me, back when I was 14, or 20, or, I don't know, 26, what my life would be like at this point in my life, I'd have said that I would probably be practicing law, and teaching, and that I would be published, and trying to write more. All of which I do. I even get paid for writing now, a recent development, and one that is hilarious to think about in the context of what my 14 or 20 or 26 year old self would have thought. I'm sure that the 14 year old would have believed that I'd still be running, and what do you know, he's made a liar out of the fatter 20 and 26 year old Bills.

Of course, there's no Nobel Prize, no novel. My career as a professional academic is far more rewarding than it is remunerative. The big verdict is still on the horizon, and the chance that I would be regarded as a wunderkid slipped by before I'd even realized it. I'm doing these things in a city far from anywhere I'd have ever guessed I'd live in. At this point I'd say that elective office-- something that the 20 year old would have had as a possibility-- is as likely as becoming a astronaut. In a way I am deep into Plan B-- or Plan C, or F. But in another way, not really-- it just looks different than I thought it would.