Getting Motivated

I love my job. Really. My job is all about suing government bureaucrats who are trampling individual rights--can it get any better than that?

All great things about the job aside, I've still allowed myself in recent months to fall into a bit of an uninspired work funk. Which is why I think a couple of encounters in the past week meant so much to me, and I thank God for sending me a bit of inspiration.

Last Friday, my aunt and uncle (Randy and Cindy) came to Phoenix for a visit. Actually, they had a trip from Las Cruces to Tucson planned, and incorporated a detour through Phoenix to visit us (kind of humbling, that's a heck of a detour!). The visit started with a tour of our house and, importantly, of our yard. You see, Randy and Cindy are horticulturists with years of experience with landscaping and, well, plants of all kinds. John and I love our little compound with it's cozy backyard, but we have no real idea what all the vegetation is (okay, so we figured out the lemon tree when it burst forth with about 1,000 lemons).

I don't know how much time we spent going through stuff in the backyard, but the thing that stuck with us the most is how much Randy and Cindy both just totally love this stuff. As they considered various plants to give advice on pruning and so forth, both just had the most fun gleam in their eyes--they both seemed to really enjoy the process of figuring out the different plants, how they could best be maximized for our enjoyment, and what ideas we could incorporate in the future.

As John put it, in ten minutes talking about our lemon tree, Randy taught us so very many things we weren't even aware we didn't know, and more importantly made us excited about learning more as we continue working with our yard.

Such an inspiration to really live out loving your career.

This lesson continued Monday and Tuesday this week when I had the chance to join a colleague, Clark Neily, in Austin, TX for a hearing in a case we are working together. Clark is sort of a super attorney in my office. I think our site says he has a "black belt in litigation" and how true is that. I work with a group of people that are just...amazing, really. Beyond what you could imagine for a group of lawyers, that is for sure. And I'm sure this story would apply to many of them, but this week I really saw in Clark the same thing we saw in Randy and Cindy: a passionate enjoyment for his work that makes the inconveniences and difficulties of life trivial.

In a matter of weeks, Clark had four MAJOR cases with very significant activity: next week is a trial in one case so he has had to work trial prep; on Tuesday in Austin, he had hearings in two separate additional cases, and he had to argue both; finally, he is part of a three-man team currently briefing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. To say Clark is busy is like suggesting that the temperature in Hell is above average.

Yet throughout our time in Austin, I never saw Clark act burdened or over-stressed. Rather, he took time out of a very limited schedule to enjoy a long dinner with clients--answering questions, getting to know them better--and after the hearing to answer any and all questions from other interior designers who attended the hearing.
All of this because Clark not only loves his job, he LOVES his job--he revels in the opportunities we have as IJ attorneys to really make a difference in the world. And he does not let anything get in the way of that passion.

These experiences have both inspired and shamed me. Inspired me toward the public interest attorney I want to be, and shamed me that I haven't worked harder to get there already. Most of all, I know deep down that so much of motivation is about deciding to get motivated--and not waiting around for something to happen.
So here's to getting motivated in 2008!