I recently saw a T-shirt proclaiming “It’s Weird Being the Same Age as Old People.” I agree, it’s so weird. These days, I sometimes wake up to, and occasionally confront, the idea that I am nearing the end of a law career I’ve known, been challenged by, and settled comfortably into for decades. It’s weird reckoning with an end and a beginning, my past, present, and future selves.
I graduated college with a biology degree. My first real job was in an immunology lab, doing important research on B and T cell functioning, or more accurately, executing cute little lab mice and stealing their blood. Not enamored with the lab-mice-blood thing, I applied to and eagerly went off to law school.
After law school, I clerked for state court judges, practiced environmental law at two large private Seattle law firms, pursued more graduate school, and then entered academia. I have especially adored the 1L law students, their eager and excited attitudes animate the hearts of any classroom teacher. Yet those same law students, weirdly, seem younger every year. My “pop culture” references increasingly generate blank stares. Mention the Fonz (Arthur Fonzarelli, Fonzie, sitcom cool dude), the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger, cybernetic android and former governor of California), the Flying Tomato (Shaun White, five-time Olympian and a three-time Olympic snowboarding gold medalist), or even Smokey Bear (Forest Service icon and cuddly charismatic megafauna) and there’s barely a nod of recognition or crack of a smile. My wife gently chides me, the students likely have no clue what you are joking about (kindly reassuring me they are not tuning out my oh so scintillating lectures, just impervious to archaic references).
Status changes are also weird. As I recently filled out my annual bar association licensing forms, I resisted switching from “active” to “inactive” or “retired.” Sure, I haven’t practiced law for years, but checking the new boxes gave me pause, a melancholy moment. I have a best friend with an app that alerts her to the days, hours, and minutes to her retirement date, which she checks with glee. I am admittedly more ambivalent and weirded out. As I wind down my teaching, I feel stabs of loss and flickers of doubt. What’s next?
The advice that rings most true for me also seems so very cliché. Retirement is an end and a beginning. My next life chapter. It’s an opportunity, a privilege, a gift to pursue new adventures rather than a dreaded end point. And, really, there’s plenty to do.
I have volunteered with ABA SEER for ages, serving on Council, on committees, and most rewarding of all, on the editorial board of Natural Resources & Environment (perhaps you’ve seen an issue?). It’s a bit weird that I first joined NR&E while pregnant with twins and now those babies are grown adults, starting careers, and living far from home. All these years later SEER remains a home base—offering collegial connection with friendly, engaging colleagues, both young and old, and substantive content to keep this old timer up to date on the law.
I’m also thinking there’s plenty more service in my next chapter. Perhaps now more than at any time in my life, the world needs passionate advocates—even old ones—who care about the environment, rule of law, justice, democracy, and humanity. And in-between trying to help with the inconsequential saving the world stuff, there’s going to be pickleball, pickleball, and more pickleball. I might even buy one of those “It’s Weird” T-shirts.
