Breathing Room...and relief.

Remember that client I said sucked my will to answer the phone? The one that was calling every day, sometimes two, three times a day? Guess who called this morning? If you said Barney the Purple Dinosaur...what the hell is wrong with you? If you said "That Client"...ding ding ding! You win...Nothing! The receptionist buzzes me and tells me who is on my line. I sigh, and say "Ok." I suck it up and answer the phone.

"Hello, Mr. Client. How are you?" I'm prepared for another stress-laden rant about the process of bankruptcy, dealing with the trustee, and evil banks from hell.

"All of our accounts were unfrozen this morning." The relief in his voice is palpable. I actually FEEL it through the phone. I also feel my stress and anxiety leeching away.

"That is wonderful. I'm glad! I'm so sorry you guys had to go through this."

"We also called the car finance company and worked out the missed payment, and made it this morning."

I reminded him not to deposit his next paycheck into that account, but instead to take it to a local bank or credit union and open an account with a branch where we know who the bankers are and it's not some faceless conglomerate.

I suddenly feel like a 1,200 pound gorilla has been lifted off my back. Yeah, you've heard the phrase "Monkey on my back." A monkey is a slight annoyance. This issue had been weighing me down to the point where I couldn't sleep, I was cramping at night from muscle tension, and I when I did sleep, I tossed and turned from the stress and anxiety. This was definitely no monkey - this was a gorilla. I breathed deeply and calmly for the first time in a week.

I continued work on my end of month billing, I did some more client work, and generally had a relaxed day without feeling like I was on the verge of tears...or throwing myself from my boss's balcony.

Now, there's this administrative assistant who works for OWD and who does a lot of different things, including mail-room duties. She's awesome. But she's quiet. I don't hear her until she's right on top of me. So when she called my name I jumped. She set down an Overnite-Express package and said "This just came for you today." I looked at the package warily.

I sat there, facing off with this package. My thought pattern was something along the lines of "I don't think I want to know what's in that..." I got brave, however, and opened up the first envelope...

KERTHUNK...a huge bundle of papers, held together with massive rubberbands lands on the desk. I open the other envelope, and an equally massive stack of papers lands on the desk next to the first. I grab the paper off the top and it hits me. We're back to nightmare land. Remember a few posts back where I talked about D-Day? Then it was us, scrambling to provide discovery. Today...the tables have turned. But I'm not too thrilled about this.

This is Production of Documents by JPMorganChase ("JPMC") and Bank of America ("BofA"). This is also called "Document Dumping." I have just received 1240 PAGES of documents from the defendants, JPMC and BofA. Not only are there over 1,200 pages, much of it is documents with very tiny financial language - you know, the fine print no one ever reads but then it causes your credit card interest rate to skyrocket from 4.99% to 23.99% APR. I just sit there and have to laugh. This is what happens when big corporations with lots of money and lots of lawyers are sued by a single practicing attorney with one or two staff members. They dump documents on you at the last minute and show you that they can churn out paper faster than you can ask for it.

I wander into my attorney's office and let him know what I just received. He asks me if there is a verification. I look at him and say "Where might that BE in this stack?" He says it should be at the end. I look...no verification. I flip through all the other pages, thinking it may be in the middle of the mess. No verification. I relay this information to the attorney, who looks pensive. Then he says, "Then, technically, they did not produce any documents."

I just shake my head. Litigation is an interesting...and sometimes childish....game.

Things are going...*#$%&@

My clients are generally nice folks. Put them in high stress situations and they become anxiety-ridden parasites that suck my will to live...or at least answer the phone. Thankfully, clients do not have my direct line; the front desk runs interference for the whole office. I can somewhat avoid them if I really want to.

I should explain how my office is laid out. We take up most of the 2nd floor of a very nice building off of Fountaingrove Parkway in Santa Rosa. If you know where the LDS Santa Rosa Mission office is, you know where I work. Now, this second floor is mostly taken up by the lawyers and support staff of a firm known as OWD. But there was leftover space. What to do? Why, sublease! My attorney, a sole-practitioner has 2 offices and 2 cubicles. He in turn subleases one of his offices to another lawyer. Clients never get to come back to the inner-workings of the office, which is generally good. We keep our area neat, and files live in their happy drawers, so there aren't piles of files (say that 3 times fast!) lying around. But it's nice to know I don't have to worry about impressions.

So, back to clients. Yes. They are sucking my will to answer the phone. Every time the receptionist buzzes me and tells me this particular client is on the phone, my stomach clenches, and I have to steel myself. Not because he is rude - but specifically because he is in such a place of stress that it is unavoidable that I become stressed out.

I hit the point of utter abjection. I can't do this. I may have been the best legal writer at school, but this is the real world, with real people, and real problems. And I am feeling out of my element, and like I'm drowning with no life raft and no Ashton Kutcher jumping out of a Coast Guard helicopter as a rescue swimmer to drag me out of the stormy seas.

And this is where things went to *#$%&@. I came home, curled up in bed, and in the tradition of depressed facebook posts, wrote: "Confession: no matter how much success I have, no matter how many awards and accolades I win, I still feel ugly. And worthless. And like an abject failure."

It set off a sh**-storm of comments...and some arguments. In the end, a good night's sleep, some crying, and pushing through the "I can't do this" moments brought me to a point where I could at least fake it.

I'm wondering if this is the point in a new career where it is sink or swim. Maybe I'll just let Jaws eat me. That way I don't have to make a decision.