President's Column

• Citation: Vol. 47 No. 1 Pg. 5
• Publication year: 2021
• Pages: 5
• topic: Business of Law

PRESIDENT'S COLUMN No. Vol. 47 No. 1 Pg. 5 Vermont Bar Journal Spring, 2021

Writer's Block and Rewards

I have writer's block. For the first time in my life, I actually don't know what to say (or write). I could write about some major issue of the day. But the issues on the national level are too huge and divisive, while the issues on local level are... huge and divisive. Also, my office-mate is a 14-year-old cat named Lucille, and when I ask her advice about what to write she doesn't understand the question and she won't respond to it. (This is not the cat who I wrote about in my last column and who brought me a live squirrel; that cat's only advice is, "focus on the squirrel." He is the happiest creature I know.)

I don't want to turn this into another column about the pandemic. But because it's taken over our lives for the last year, it's both hard to avoid and very tiring all at the same time. It reminds me of the Sunday after Thanksgiving every year where I'm tired of eating leftover turkey but that's all I have in the house. COVID-19: The Turkey Burrito You Made But Don't Want.

I recently read an article in the New York Times about the concept of languishing, and it occurred to me that the concept probably describes a lot of us right now, at least to some degree. "It's the void between depression and flourishing -the absence of well-being. You don't have symptoms of mental illness, but you're not the picture of mental health, either. You're not functioning at full capacity."^[1] It seems as if languishing was a color it would be beige. If it was food it would be oatmeal (or the aforementioned turkey burrito you don't really want). If it was a word it would be "meh." Not bad. Not the best. It just is.

This Times article suggests that one way to combat the feeling of languishing is to figure out what gets us into a flow that doesn't get interrupted. Divided attention is the enemy of flow. It suggests focusing on a small goal, where there will be a sense of joy from the reward for attaining the goal.

Arguably, sitting down to work on a project, getting into the groove of the project, and achieving part of that project, feels good to us. Distractions (I'm looking at you, email) disrupt the flow and make it hard to focus. My prior attempts at writing this column went like this:

Write six words>check email that just popped up>jot down something on my to-do list>call that client who I needed to speak to about whatever>start response to...