Growing Pains

My entry today is about several things, but I think they all have the same theme: Growing Pains.  My life is having Growing Pains.  I know a lot of people don’t necessarily believe that growing pains are real – I can personally attest that they are.  When I was little, I would get the worst aches in my knees and elbows – constant, throbbing aches which sometime had me in tears.  Unfortunately, none of my siblings ever had them, so they thought I was making it up. SO NOT.  Anyway, right now I am surrounded by growing pains –professionally and domestically.

Earlier this month, my colleague and friend Joel and I became shareholders at our firm.  This has been a long time coming; something that we have planned and waited for in various stages of patience for the last six years.  You would think that with so much time to prepare, so many plans made for positive changes, the transition from associate to shareholder would have been an easy one.  Not so much.  There are a lot of little details that go along with changing the status of a firm – the name change was easy, but after that, it got a little dicey.  The long, long list of people who needed to be notified, of documents that needed to be changed…we are still finding things we’ve missed. 

More difficult, though, is adjusting from my own ideals of how Joel and I becoming shareholders would change our firm – make it run more smoothly, with less staff drama, less attorney drama – to reality.  In reality, people hate change, staff and attorneys alike, even when it will make things better.  They fight it at every turn and make themselves and those around them miserable in the process.  I feel like I should be able to do something to stop it, but I can’t.  I am not diplomatic, am very blunt, and I’m afraid that if I actually said or did what I wanted to to address these problems, we would have no staff!  The currents in this office could drag someone to their death.  I firmly believe that, eventually, we will get things to where they should be according to our plan; in the meantime, however, it is rather painful.

At home, my 8 –soon to be 9 year old son – was told he needed to start bringing deodorant to school as his teacher does not want any stinky boys in her room! I can appreciate that, but I am in complete denial that my son, my BABY, could be old enough to have body odor.  Good grief! After that comes… and after that….and after that…I don’t even want to think about it.  I am incredibly proud of him, and I love him like crazy.  I’ve made lots and lots of plans for him once he’s grown, but I cannot comprehend him actually growing up!  He’s having the time of him life – to me, the reality is becoming painful. 

I have always been the type of person who had to learn things the hard way: for example, I know that if you push a windshield with your feet hard enough (like they do in the movies), it will crack.  I also know that even if a garage door has auto-reverse on it, it doesn’t engage quickly enough not to smash your truck and destroy the door. (Sorry, honey)  I know that these changes all need to happen, that I cannot stop them, and that I would not even if I could.  I know that things will be better in the future; if I can only get through these growing pains.

Christine