A story: from ER to ice bath (part 1)

Yesterday I shared a post on social media about how my wife and I went to a breathing/meditation workshop in Canada. A lot of folks were curious why on earth we would spend our Sunday afternoon meditating in ice baths.

This is part 1 of answering that question.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been practicing law now for over a decade. As a young law student, I’m not sure I could have imagined myself ten years later. I certainly wasn’t giving any thought to how my own physical and mental health would evolve over that period of time. As a mid-twenty something nobody really talked about what we had to do as young lawyers to proactively manage our health or well-being. We were simply told to be prepared to work hard, be stressed, and avoid the often go-to vice of attorneys everywhere: substance abuse.

As a young attorney I took pride in billing more hours than the minimum (and most of the time more than any other associates in the firm). I took pride in my work ethic and my own mantra that there wasn’t an attorney out there that could out-work me. Sure, I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder—a result of some pretty deep rooted insecurities stemming from my childhood. But this approach worked well for me; at least until it didn’t. I always believed that my ability to manage a high level of stress was one of my strengths. What I didn’t realize is that it was not physically or mentally sustainable.

Looking back, the first sign that something was wrong actually started manifesting itself during law school. Through much of my time in school I suffered from regular chest pains and difficulty breathing. The stress of law school, a particularly toxic relationship, lack of exercise, lack of sleep and the fear of failure all started catching up with me. I went to the school health clinic, received some EKG and stress tests, and kept pushing on. With no real diagnosis I simply brushed it off and kept working my routine—which often included 3 to 4 energy drinks a day.

The chest pains and shortness of breath continued for years with me mostly just ignoring them or writing them off as a result of being tall (I’m not even going to try and rationalize this now). I continued my routine without making any changes—graduating, passing the bar, and practicing as an attorney.

Being a young attorney during the Great Recession brought a certain level of insecurity about your job. There were constant stories about layoffs, firms going out of business, deferrals and pay cuts. To mitigate this risk I spent almost every evening at networking events trying to build a diverse book of my own clients. The plan, I told myself, was that I wanted to make sure that I had enough clients to walk out the door and know I’d be okay. Most of these events included drinks, and most often eating out. I’d be up early and would go to bed late. “Work hard, play hard” is what my buddies and I used to jokingly say.

It should come as no surprise that none of this helped.

It was my second year practicing and I vividly recall being in my office and starting to feel chest pains and shortness of breath again. But this time it was worse. A LOT worse. I of course began to try and rationalize what was happening and couldn’t help but think it was something I ate, or something I drank. Perhaps some food poisoning? I got up and decided to go to the bathroom—rushing to a stall thinking I may be sick. As I opened the stall door, I collapsed to the floor clutching my chest and stomach. It was at this point I realized this was something else—something that I couldn’t explain away. I dragged myself into the lobby of my office gasping for air and trying to utter words that would help provide some context to the receptionist. Given my usual extroverted, happy-go-lucky self, the receptionist actually thought I was joking—that I was just pranking her. It wasn’t until she saw my face turning purple that she realized something was actually wrong.

My coworkers rushed me to the hospital where I stayed for several hours of observations. They gave me an IV, some medication and after a couple of hours I began to feel better. The ultimate diagnosis was one of two things: it was either something wrong with my pancreas or I experienced a stress attack (something at the time I was unfamiliar with). The physician advised that in order to really make a determination they would have to perform surgery and examine my pancreas. We both decided that the better route was to keep an eye on my pancreas and see if the issue happened again. The doctor also recommended reducing my caffeine intake and cutting out energy drinks.

Given that I just spent several hours in an emergency room in crippling pain, cutting out my daily red bulls seemed like the least I could do. Since that day I have not had a single energy drink. I have also kept my caffeine consumption down to generally one cup of coffee a day. This marked the first change, albeit a small one, to improve my health. Unfortunately I did nothing to address the root cause of stress and anxiety in my life.

Over the next few years, I would continue to experience health issues with no real ability for a doctor to diagnose. It started with chronic heartburn, then regular gastrointestinal distress, sleep issues, weight gain, and so on and so on. When it got bad enough I would go see a doctor—who would again tell me medically there was nothing wrong and perhaps send me to another specialist (who would ultimately do the same thing). I continued my attempts to rationalize my way through the issues: cutting out gluten, cutting out fried food, and reducing alcohol consumption for some random period of time. It had to be something I was eating or drinking. It had to be something a doctor was missing. This pattern continued for a few more years with no real progress. It was a toxic loop of stress, undiagnosed health issue, random dietary accommodation (usually the latest food fad), rinse and repeat. The result was ultimately a tear in my large intestines and a colonoscopy before I was 35.

This would all eventually come to a crescendo in a penthouse suite of the W in Miami Beach. I was there for a conference for my law practice. At the time I had started teaching a class at the University at Buffalo School of Law and didn’t want to reschedule my class. Looking at my calendar I realized that I had enough time to hop my flight from Buffalo to Miami, get to the hotel, set up my laptop to teach class via Zoom (or whatever the 2016 equivalent of Zoom was), and then get to the opening reception of the conference. It was going to be tight, but it was doable I told myself.

The week before we were to leave, I received a call from a client with a major legal/PR crisis. Our investigation team was working with the public relations team day and night to help the client respond and keep the matter out of the papers until we were ready to comment. For most of the week that strategy was going well. I was feeling good about heading to Miami for the long weekend. I boarded the flight, put my phone on airplane mode, and enjoyed a couple of hours of quiet. Unfortunately, the plane ended up being delayed about 30 minutes on landing due to an issue at the Miami airport. My already tight schedule was getting even tighter.

As we landed I turned my phone back on to about 15 missed calls, dozens of text messages and enough emails to make me want to throw my phone onto the runway. In hindsight that may have been a sound idea. The first voicemail was from a large national publication looking for a quote on my client’s recent legal issues. Not a good start. The car ride to the hotel seemed like it was hours. Me texting and calling frantically to get up to speed and help manage what had become a PR crisis.

Looking down at my watch I realized that there was now no way I was going to make it up to my hotel room in time to start my class. “Well, we’re just going to have to start 15 minutes late”, I told myself. I go to check in at the hotel (obviously in a hurry at this point), only to find out the W doesn’t actually have my reservation. See, we were initially supposed to be at another hotel that was damaged by a recent hurricane so the conference organizers transferred our reservations to the W. I was late to register for the conference and apparently someone, somewhere, dropped the ball on getting my registration transferred over. “Not a problem”, the hotel attendant assured me, “we can get you something!” Plus side—this ended up being the penthouse suite. Down side—I was now about 30 minutes late for my class.

I frantically flipped open my laptop, launched Zoom, and got my class started. Moments later my phone rang followed immediately by a text message. This time it is a lobbyist we were working with that needed me to review a statement ASAP. My heart was racing, I was sweating through my suit jacket, and hadn’t eaten anything in probably 8 hours at this point. Even now, years later, I can still feel the crippling weight of this moment. I can still feel the tightness in my chest and the air barely moving into my lungs with each breath.

I’m going to save you the painful details of how this all played out, but suffice it to say it wasn’t my proudest moment. Several hours of frantic work later, and well after the sun had set, I put my laptop down and had a complete meltdown. My wife, who had accompanied me on this tire fire of a journey, had a pretty clear message for me:

“This can’t happen again. You need to get your shit together.”

As I inhaled the room-service she ordered while I was manically triaging my life, she made me promise her that after I got a good night’s sleep I would wake up and figure out how to make sure this never happened again. Admittedly this hit pretty hard. But what exactly was I going to say in defense of what my wife just witnessed? Nothing. Because there was no defense. I acquiesced and committed to making serious changes to my life.

This was the first time I realized that it wasn’t something or someone else’s failure causing my problems—it was me. It was stress, it was untreated anxiety, and years of unhealthy habits. As my executive coach would later on say to me, it was the first time I began to realize that:

“You can easily lie to yourself. It is much more difficult to lie to your body.”

This was the start of my journey towards a better me.

The hijacking of cancel culture:

how we are ostracizing victims and feeding our worst tendencies

Over a month ago I sat down to start writing an article responding to a question posed by a colleague online: “Is cancel culture real?”

My goal was to answer this question and argue that despite some politicians crying wolf, cancel culture was very much a real thing with potentially devastating consequences for those on the receiving end. Over the weeks that followed our national discourse around cancel culture went through a rapid evolution. So much so that it became increasingly difficult for me to shape my writing in a way that felt like it fit the moment. Nearly ten pages later and my attempt at answering a simple question started to feel more like a journal submission on a subject that I was by no means an expert. The amorphous definition, the history, psychological impact, the profiteering of rage, case studies—I was prepared to break it all down. Maybe at some point I will, but that was not the point. I was trying to tell a story. I was trying to express the feelings I had after working with people who had actually been canceled and seeing the fallout they endured. What I wrote though was no longer telling a story.

In many ways my own opinion on cancel culture was going through its own journey. I shared the same thoughts many have put forth when answering whether cancel culture is real:

“Of course it’s real!”

“No way!”

“It depends!”

“You mean accountability!”

“We’ve gone too far!”

“It’s cyberbullying!”

“It’s propaganda!”

“I don’t know!”

All of these things have gone through my mind. And to some degree or another, they are all correct. But how do you begin to write about that? Even as I sit here typing there is a certain level of insecurity about the subject and my own opinions. This is complex. It is messy. It is inherently contradictory. And we’ve stretched the subject so thin that it can effectively be anything to anyone. Writing about it began to feel like Alice trying to get directions from the Cheshire Cat. Where do I start? Which direction do I go? How do I avoid the madness?

I thought about just shelving this topic and moving on to something easier to write about. I then remembered the people I’ve witnessed be canceled—and the disastrous consequences on their lives. I remember the late-night phone calls in tears as they struggle to figure out how to pick up the pieces of their lives. Their stories deserve to be told. They deserve to be part of the dialogue.

The fundamental problem about cancel culture at the moment is that we as a country have completely hijacked what it means to be canceled. It has become a proxy culture war wrapped in political theater. Every week someone new is on CNN or Fox News complaining that they have been canceled—all while raising gobs of money off of the theatrics. Spoiler alert:  they haven’t. Donald Trump wasn’t canceled. Dr. Suess wasn’t canceled. Andrew Cuomo wasn’t canceled. Josh Hawley wasn’t canceled. If you are on national television complaining to millions that you were canceled—guess what? You weren’t. That isn’t being canceled. The canceled do not have the luxury of a national audience. They are powerless to control the mob taking aim at them.

There is a difference between celebrities and public figures with a national platform claiming they have been canceled and every day private individuals who have been canceled and had their lives destroyed over relatively minor indiscretions. There is a difference between holding public figures accountable and destroying someone’s life who has no voice to speak out. This duality needs to be front of mind when we talk about cancel culture.  By co-opting the narrative of what is canceled, we have in many ways further ostracized the real victims of cancel culture. These are real people that have had their careers destroyed, been bullied by their communities, terrorized by anonymous internet users and troll armies, and have suffered devastating consequences. All while the political theater takes center stage and continues to drown them out.

Jon Ronson’s TED Talk, When online shaming goes too far, does an excellent job of examining the dehumanization and brutal cruelty of cancel culture and its inherent paradoxical nature. That paradox is likely why many of us choose to look at the world in absolutes instead of coming to terms with the inherent conflict, nuance, duality, and fallout from our actions. There is an uncomfortableness with sincerely examining the impact of cancel culture, because in doing so we have to admit at least in part, our contribution to that system and some level of hypocrisy. Make no mistake, I am no different.

In my endeavor to write about this subject, I wanted to focus on the personal stories of those who have dealt first hand with being canceled. People like Emmanuel Cafferty who was fired for what he thought was just cracking his knuckles after online-outrage decided he was flashing the white power sign. Or the now infamous Justine Sacco who had her life blown up over a rather stupid tweet meant to be a cynical joke. Then there was Sara Christensen who had her business destroyed and had to move because of people threatening her life over shaming an anonymous job applicant for an Instagram post. And finally, people like Laura Krolczyk who had a mob destroy her career, publicly shame her, and threaten her and her family’s lives over a Facebook post that most people frankly probably agree with a year later.

Did these people make mistakes? At least in the case of Justine and Sara, certainly. Laura? Maybe not. Emmanuel? Perhaps even less so. Regardless of culpability, does utterly destroying someone’s life seem like justice in light of a relatively innocuous mistake? Is this accountability or is it the modern-day equivalent of publicly stoning someone? If this is our standard, are we expected to be perfect at all times in a world where most of our thoughts and actions are documented electronically for the world to judge anonymously online? Is that realistic when a mistake can become an algorithm fueled trend in the matter of minutes? Do we really want to hold ourselves to that impossible standard? I know I don’t.

Yes, we should all work towards being better humans, but perfection is not possible—especially in the context of ever evolving cultural norms. This is not meant to suggest that we should not speak out about injustices, but how we approach that cannot be lumped into two categories of good and evil:

You can live a good ethical life but some bad phraseology in a tweet can overwhelm it all; become a clue to your secret inner evil. Maybe there are two kinds of people in the world. Those people that favor humans over ideology and those people that favor ideology over humans…everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. Even though we know that’s not true about our fellow humans. What’s true is that we are clever and stupid. What’s true is that we’re grey areas.

Jon Ronson, TED Talk, When online shaming goes too far

There is room for kindness and empathy—there has to be. Otherwise are we really any better than those that we are judging? There has to be room for redemption, learning, reflection and growth. If we recklessly destroy someone’s life in the name of justice, have we really become better humans? If we push someone to the brink of taking their own life in the name of retribution for a misguided tweet, can we really sleep easy at night knowing we shared or retweeted something that helped contribute to the mob? The more time I spent thinking about these questions, the more I’ve looked at the pain and suffering cancel culture can have on ordinary people, the less comfortable I’ve become with it. I know I am by no means perfect. I’ve made mistakes in my own life. I have been selfish and have hurt people at times. And I have for sure shared articles and liked tweets at someone else’s peril with the cover of internet amusement. Never once did I think about how those relatively insignificant tweets might be contributing to destroying someone’s life—at least until now.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I know encouraging the worst of us can’t be the answer. I know drowning out the already voiceless can’t be the answer. My hope is that maybe kindness, empathy and compassion are a good place to start—that we can start to realize that the standards of accountability for public figures cannot be the same for the powerless. That humanity needs to be an important part of the equation.

Selling a Buffalo Startup: A Clearview Social Story

Adrian Dayton and I were in law school together at the same time--smack in the middle of the Great Recession. Not the most ideal time to be in law school. He was actually a year ahead of me and because of that saw the brunt of the fallout in the legal market at the time. As I think back I can painfully recall law students having their offers pulled, struggling to find jobs, and looking at any and all employment opportunities. Adrian and I knew of each other but admittedly we weren't close at the time. Over the course of the next decade that would all change.

In 2009 I just happened to end up sailing with Adrian on a mutual friend’s boat. I say friend now, but the reality is at the time that "friend" was general counsel of a local tech company and I was hoping to network my way into a sweet in-house job after graduating. That didn't quite pan out, but it did result in a decade of competitively racing J22 sailboats around North America so I can't exactly complain.

Stepping onto that sailboat was the first time I had actually met Adrian. At the time he was working as an associate for a large corporate law firm here in Buffalo--the kind of job a rising law student coveted during the throes of the Great Recession. "Perfect", I thought to myself "perhaps Adrian can get me in as an associate!"

Little did I know that Adrian was about to be laid off.  As we sailed out onto the middle of Lake Erie, Adrian shared with us that he had no work to do and spent most of his days sitting on his computer learning how to use social media. He began telling us that social media would revolutionize how attorneys generated businesses through platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. Keep in mind this was around 2009 and the dominate social platform was Facebook, and the idea of leveraging social media for law firms was still a rather radical idea that challenged conceptual norms around the rules of ethics. The legal industry is, after all, a notoriously late adopter of most technology.

Amid the racing Adrian shared with us that he thought he was going to lose his job and was thinking of starting a social media company for lawyers. Without hesitation I looked at Adrian and told him he was nuts; that it would never work—that I couldn’t possibly see lawyers paying someone to help them use social media platforms. 

Boy would I live to eat those words.

Adrian went on to found Clearview Social as part of Z80 labs. He received the support of local investors like the Buffalo Angels and Rand Capital, and rapidly grew the company to over 50,000 users. In 2016 I had the ironic pleasure of working with Clearview Social as the first law firm in Buffalo to adopt the social media software for lawyers. We both got a good laugh at my initial reaction back on that sailboat nearly a decade earlier as I handed him a check.

Life has a weird way of working out--a winding road that makes it difficult to predict where and when opportunities arise. I didn't get the cushy in-house tech job or the associate job at that corporate firm, but over a decade later I found myself helping Adrian sell his company for a successful exit--a success for Buffalo, investors in WNY, and the whole team at Clearview Social.

Originally posted at: https://insights.colliganlaw.com/post/102gu71/selling-a-buffalo-startup-a-clearview-social-story

A Project: Breaking Through

Adirondack Balloon Festival, Queensbury, NY (2017)

This past summer I began writing about my own story in an attempt at improving my own awareness, reflection, and growth. You can read the beginning of that story here. In doing so I couldn’t help but think how grateful I was for my life. It seems that at any point, one twist of fate, one ounce of luck running out, or one misjudgment could have easily sent me in a much darker direction. Much of my life felt like dishes, balanced on a pole, in the middle of a hurricane. In some ways that constant stress, fear, and anxiety has fueled me. Fear, after all, can be an incredibly motivating feeling—albeit with some pretty significant mental and physical consequences.

I was 36 years old when I finally realized (or finally admitted to myself) that the compartmentalization and internalizing of stress and anxiety had taken a physical toll on me much of my adult life. While I had lied to myself about the root cause of these, my body refused to do the same. In college and law school it was chest pains, as a young associate it was stress attacks and a trip to the emergency room, and in my 30s it became digestive and immune issues.

Since then, I have made a point to prioritize my own wellbeing, exercise regularly, meditate, place boundaries in my life, disconnect regularly, and better understand myself. Hopefully to grow, be a more effective leader, and serve those I can. Part of that process is unavoidably intertwined with my childhood, my family, and trauma that, the more I learn, is deeply rooted in our family’s history. Breaking Through started as me telling that story—a story about me, my family, and the impacts of generational trauma. I will continue to work on that project but it occurred to me that so many business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals have their own story to tell. As an attorney I have worked with so many of them. I have helped them achieve their goals, and navigate some of the most challenging moments of their lives. I’ve had glimpses into their fears, trauma, and ultimately determination and grit that drives you.

These are stories that should be shared. Whether sacrificing everything to navigate a business through COVID, the effects of being canceled, health issues, or the fear of not being able to care for a sick loved one. I’m not here to talk about hustle, how much money someone made, or how you just gotta keep faking it until you make it. You can get enough of that elsewhere. I’m here to pull layers back, be authentic, be vulnerable, and help us learn from each other.

That is what Breaking Through is. We will be putting out regular content exploring these subjects coupled with podcasts telling these stories firsthand from the people that live them.

I hope you’ll join us.

A story: 9/11 and darkness

Margaret River Beach, Western Australia

19 years ago I was hiking in a cave in Margaret River Beach, Australia. At one point we were fairly deep into this cave and reached a point when our guide stopped us. At first we looked at the rock formations (stalagmites, etc). Then he looked around and told us that we were now at a point where absolutely no outside light was penetrating the space we were in. He had us turn off our flashlights and anything that would emit light. The darkness was so overwhelming that it threw off your senses. There was no way of gaining perspective. Touch was the only way to move around and even then there was a sense of vertigo. You never notice the difference even the smallest amount of light makes until you are in absolute darkness.

As I was leaving the cave I walked by a man, who noticed my accent and asked, “Are you American? The World Trade Center was just bombed.”

My guide drove us to the nearest gas station with a television to learn the full extent of what happened. We got there as the second tower collapsed. Every one of us mourned.

I will never forget that moment. I will never forget the compassion and support that strangers in a foreign country showed during a terrifying and tragic moment in history. I will never forget the humanity that we all shared no matter our background, race, nationality or creed.

I will never forget the difference even the smallest amount of light makes in absolute darkness.

A story: the beginning

The start.

I was born and raised in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. I went to school in Saranac—a town of about 4,000 people. My family lineage can be traced back to the settlers of the Town of Plattsburgh and the Town of Schuyler Falls and Ezra Turner in particular. A broach has been handed down by the women in my family since the early 1800s. For years it was on display in the Schuyler Falls town hall along with a photo of my Grandmother Elsie Allen. The town was named after the Schuyler family (Yes, that Schuyler family) who purchased a mill on the Salmon River.

It is believed that my mother’s father’s side of the family (Allen) is a decedent of American Revolutionary Ethan Allen who led the Green Mountain Boys and captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1775.

Scars from the war of 1812 dot the landscape. Lake Champlain is filled with a rich history. The area is deeply connected to the birth of America.

It is also an area of the state, and the country, that is incredibly beautiful. New York is defined to most in the world by New York City—by skyscrapers, Broadway, high fashion, Wall Street, pizza and bagels. Mention New York to someone in Europe and they don’t even realize there is something more than the State’s namesake city. But upstate New York, and the Adirondack mountains in particular offer breathtaking vistas, a connection with nature, and one of the few places in the state without cellphone reception. It offers a chance to disconnect from the world.

A few years ago I discovered this quote in a book on the history of the town of Schuyler Falls:

"Our forest life was rough and rude, and dangers clothed us round; but here, amid the green old trees, a home we sought and found. Oft through our dwelling wintry blasts would rush with shriek and moan: we cared not- though they were but frail, we felt they were our own!"

- Ezra Turner, 1794

It is my home but like most kids, it was a place I didn’t appreciate growing up. I was determined to escape it and what I perceived as the deficiencies of living in a poor rural community. But time and distance gave me much needed perspective and appreciation for my home. Having lived on the other side of the planet, traveled the globe, and been away for more than half my life, it is a special place I look forward to returning to despite some of the pain that comes with it. It’s a place I have loved, loathed, been embarrassed by, been proud of, and found peace in.

There is so much tragedy that occurred in my family over the course of 200 years. A family that created a community from nothing, paved the way for generations, amassed property and achieved stability, only to see it all lost from neglect and tragedy. In may ways the generational trauma of my family shaped the very events that paved the roads in my life. It was ultimately luck and love that helped keep me heading in the right direction.

My first memories.

“What is your earliest memory?”, I asked myself as I started thinking about writing this. Not that I regularly talk in the third person, but it was an exercise of self-reflection and awareness. A question meant to prompt some direction in determining this story. I’ve found it a challenge to reflect on parts. Admittedly I have always excelled at compartmentalizing. This of course means that in order to even understand my own story, that I need to unpack some of these boxes I stored away—even the ones I would prefer to pretend don’t exist. You know, the boxes tucked in the back of your mind, behind the exercise equipment I keep telling myself I’m going to use. Behind the boxes of photos and the trinkets. That seems like a good place to start.

To be blunt, my two earliest memories are of trauma. The sort of trauma you typically spend years in therapy over. The sort of trauma that typically results in being a statistic in a crime report.

The first is of my childhood best friend Aaron choking on a pear and dying. I was little more than a toddler when it happened. We were living in a trailer somewhere—brown and tan if my memory serves me. The brown and tan that apparently were invented in the 1980s and allowed to run rampant. Aaron was trying to show how fast he could eat a pear. He was a kid—being just like any other kid using their imagination and sense of play to turn the most mundane activity into fun. The fun would sadly end in tragedy when a piece of pear got lodged in his throat and blocked his lungs from receiving oxygen.

I honestly don’t remember much more than that. The older I get the more fleeting the memory. Writing this I am struggling to remember Aaron’s last name. But this was the first instance of someone close to me dying. I didn’t understand as a kid but I knew a piece of me had changed. Even now, I think about Aaron every time I see someone goofing around while eating. It is a nebulous imprint on my soul.

My second childhood memory is of my father attempting to kidnap my sister and me. I use the word father, though I would find out sometime later that he was not my biological father. This was honestly a relief, but ultimately defined an absence throughout much of my life. More on that later.

Back to the kidnapping. My father was an abusive alcoholic who posed a significant threat to my mother and my sister and I. This is not hyperbole. He beat the shit out of my mother regularly. Eventually my mother had the strength to leave. She packed up her car, took my sister and I, and left our trailer. We moved from apartment to apartment, often bouncing checks to avoid eviction until we could find a new place. For a period of time we lived in Saranac, NY down the street from what would eventually be my high school. We had a two bedroom apartment on the second floor. I remember as a kid thinking how imposing the building was. It was little more than a two story a white box—its large wooden balconies extended out across the front of each floor.

One night the conflict between my mother and father would come to a head. Parts of that night I recall and other parts have been filled in over the years by my mother. A haze of sounds frames that night. Screaming, crashing, the sound of broken glass—the sound of violence. What I know is that my father forcefully entered the apartment at some point that evening. My mother took my sister and I and hid us in our bedroom. I was barely older than a toddler, my sister even younger. I remember holding her, trying my best to shelter her from the sounds. In front of us was a dresser that we painted together. My mother picked up some used furniture. She painted it white and let my sister and I put colored hand and foot prints all over. Red, blue, green, and yellow. My hand, her hand, my foot, her foot.

The evening ended with my father throwing an exercising bike through my mother’s femur—shattering it. The police arrived shortly thereafter and attempted to restrain my father. When he tried to fight the officers, they ended up beating him until they could put restraints on him. Even in handcuffs he pushed an officer down a flight of stairs. Bloodied, broken, and beaten, he left our lives.

Bloodied, broken and beaten, we began to pick up the pieces of ours.

Left of somewhere.

A letter to myself from November 2016

This is now the fifth time in over a week that I’ve sat down, sipped some coffee, put my fingers on a keyboard and tried to type words. I’d write a few sentence, some thoughts, and then a pause. As if subconsciously acknowledging my own internal struggle, I’d then open a browser, scroll through Facebook and slowly pull the Band-Aid off the wound I’ve been struggling to grapple with since we elected a neo-fascist as our president.

For over a week now I've been left with an inexplicable feeling. An emptiness. Maybe it’s some sort of disgust I haven’t experienced before. Whatever it is, it has been an emotional itch to which there is seemingly no way to scratch. I could probably spend a few thousand dollars in therapy figuring out exactly what the word is to describe it, but good scotch and bourbon are cheaper and more enjoyable, and I like to write.

I've tried many times now to sit down and put into words exactly what is going on in my head. Writing has always allowed me to express myself—a cathartic process for sure. It has always been about diving into a better understanding of myself. There’s a folder where I save these writings, hundreds of them over the course of the last decade. Some of them I share, others stay hidden away as an expression only unto myself.

This, this effort to put words to paper has presented an altogether unique challenge. Where does the deeply pragmatic optimist, socially progressive, anti-Trump republican go from here? I don’t mean literally. I know where my office is. I still remember the address to my house. I certainly knew where my polling place was on November 8th. It is however a profoundly philosophical question.

Were it not for this lingering pit in my stomach, I might be inclined to just bury this conflict and go about my day. Indeed, I’m rather good at compartmentalizing stress and emotions. Hell, those of us un/lucky enough to put the letters J.D. after our names basically have a degree in it. Juris Doctorate might as well be Latin for suppression of emotions. And don’t get me wrong, compartmentalizing in many ways is a necessary coping mechanism in today’s world. Recently though I’ve found compartmentalizing, the idea of trying to move forward as if nothing happened, only results in guilt. That’s certainly a first.

Perhaps that isn’t clear enough. Perhaps I’m being too passive in tone, and too abstract in my own thought. So let me be clear. Right now, at this very moment, continuing on with everyday life, continuing on like nothing has happened, like we all should go back to being conscripted cogs in the workday machine, is just unacceptable. At its most basic level, it feels very much like you are just turning your back to an impending tragedy; that you are saying goodbye to a loved one that you know damn well you will never see again.

It is difficult to listen to the optimistic pragmatist in me after the bizarro world we woke up to on November 9th. The snow globe wasn’t just shaken, it was shattered, drained of water and imitation snow, and is quickly being filled with rage, hate and dissonance. See your Facebook feed for an example.

I get it though. One half of this country mostly wanted to throw a brick through the window of the political elite. And throw a brick they did.

Is this an over simplification? Sure it is. But the disenfranchised people throwing the bricks regardless of the consequences are essentially who made the difference last Tuesday. Let’s not forget that most presidential elections essentially come down to winning over that swing vote—that segment of the population that makes up 5-10% of the electorate. That is who decides who runs this country. Did their voting bloc contain racist, xenophobic, sexist, neo-Nazi bigots? Yup, it sure did. Did it contain fundamentalist Christians hell bent on condemning us all, the Alt-Right and the KKK? Yup, them too. But none of these groups accurately represent 50% of the Country alone. So let’s agree to stop characterizing with a broad stroke everyone who cast a ballot for Trump on Tuesday as something they are not.

Unfortunately, what the brick throwers may not realize, is that by casting a vote against the system, that by shattering the window of the K street elite, you didn’t replace it with something better. You didn’t improve the system. You likely handed the keys over to an anti-intellectualism, quasi-authoritarian demagogue who preyed on the fears and utter worst of humanity. It is that underbelly of society that now feels emboldened and they are now driving the whole damn bus.

But it’s really about an economy that doesn’t work for the average person in America, right? Well my friends, history tells us that the road to hell is often paved with economics and the exploitation of the working class. Seriously, pick up any historical account of the rise of Nazi Germany. It’s about the economy stupid. It always is.

This is not meant to downplay that much of America has not felt the recovery from our most recent recession. They haven’t. Indeed, most of the recovery has been felt by the top 25% of income earners—the lobbyists, the attorneys, the doctors, the bankers, the folks running Wall Street—the elite. It is easy to see why so much vitriol is cast towards these people.

By all accounts though, I am likely (strike that) an elite. It’s strange perhaps, but I don’t say that with pride. I even wrote a qualifier in the first draft of that admission mostly because I struggle with that label. It is not where I come from. I grew up in rural America, with a very modest upbringing. I know what government cheese and peanut butter look and taste like. I’ve put them both on whatever the generic version of Wonder Bread is.  Like most of America, my family worked hard, did their best to overcome adversity and centered a family around love. Even still, much of where I grew up is that part of America that hasn’t benefited from the recovery. The largest employer is a maximum-security prison and when the soviet-era nuclear military base closed, many fled the area in search of jobs.

Admittedly, I left that same area knowing full well that finding a career would be difficult if I stayed. I worked hard, went to school, played by the rules, got more than a few lucky breaks, made a living, started a life I’m proud of--all to now feel like the bad guy. To feel like I ended up on the wrong side of the fence. All the while knowing that had just one thing in my path altered slightly, I may have still been in that rural town. I may have been the one with a brick in my hand ready to throw it at the alternate universe of myself.

I’ve had my feet planted in both Americas. I have to this day lived somewhere between them. I shake the hands of the elite and I kiss the cheek of family many of which undoubtedly threw bricks on Tuesday. I’ve always embraced this juxtaposition and in many ways, I’ve always seen it as a great personal asset. But at this moment, it is a strange and surreal feeling to say the least.

I care deeply about politics. I care deeply about democracy. I care about the process, the details, the governing. I am a student of history and politics, and spend countless hours debating policy and political philosophy with my wife (even if she eventually tunes me out). And yet somehow over the last seven days I have felt like I’m supposed to be ashamed of that. Well, bullshit. I’m not going to apologize for believing in intellectual pragmatism. I’m not going to apologize for the empathy, understanding and compassion guiding my own philosophy.

Throughout all of this, one question cannot be avoided: where do the countless anti-Trump republicans go from here? Where does it leave a man without a country who feels like he’s being held in some sort of political purgatory? I don’t necessarily have an answer right now.

Until recently I considered myself a Rockefeller Republican—the socially progressive types that were once known to exist in the great Empire State. Libertarians without the crazy. As of Tuesday though there can be no doubt that the Republican crescendo resulting in the election of Trump has ended any tolerance which allowed me to be affiliated with this party. Make no mistake, there is no doubt in my mind that the Grand Old Party will say good riddance as myself and the other “RINOs” walk out of our local Board of Elections.

But as I finish writing this I’ve come to the realization that perhaps that’s all I needed; that amongst this wildly shifting political landscape and threat to the very fabric of democratic progress, that where I’ve landed, even if I don’t recognize it, is left of somewhere.

America, we cry today.

America has had a tough go at it lately. Pick up any newspaper (or open your news feed) and you’ll be reminded of the skyrocketing COVID-19 numbers, hospital admissions increasing, ICUs at capacity, increasing deaths, and an economy in shambles. Each week we hear how millions are losing their jobs, and how tens of millions remain unemployed. Each week more businesses close. All while Congress and the White House debate policy about whether to extend benefits and bail out our towns, schools, and states.

It’s been difficult to say the least. And when we see countries around the world control the spread of COVID, and begin reopening schools, resume baseball games, resume some form of normalcy—we can’t help but be frustrated by the contrast. This, after all, is America, the exceptional; all our lives we’ve been told that this nation has the world’s best healthcare, the best experts, the best economy. And yet here we are, America the pariah.

That sobering reality has not been more clear to me than today.

This afternoon we had some errands to run. We would be stopping by several places across Western New York so I was careful to map out our route. We would be driving north through the City, into Kenmore, across to Amherst, and then last but not least Cheektowaga before heading back home. A Saturday not all that out of the ordinary.

As we drive up Delaware we see the Pizza Hut that we used to frequent closed—the awning tattered and blowing in the wind. For most of us older millennials Pizza Hut will always have a special place in our childhood memories filled with Book It and pizza parties. Sure, it’s not the best pizza, but it’s still pizza and those were great memories. It’s hard not to think back and smile. Our visits now are about nostalgia; and perhaps some pan pizza and salad bar.

As we continued through to Amherst we drove by vacant store fronts and countless shuttered auto-service stores. My wife and I briefly discuss how much the reduced driving from COVID and working from home must be impacting auto-mechanics and service centers. Heck, we just sold our second car because we didn’t need it and wanted to save some money. It makes sense, but the corner lots which used to carry bright yellow Monro Muffler signs like an auto-beacon are now adorned with for sale/lease signs and overgrown landscaping.

We drive by the mall which is a shell of its former self. We quickly pass the shadow of a Chuck E. Cheese sign on a plaza. We see store after store, small business after small business, closed. Those fortunate to remain open have storefronts covered in handmade signs.

But even with this, there still feels a disconnect between the shuttered businesses and most Americans fortunate enough to still be working. It’s easy to compartmentalize the pain of so many fellow Americans when it’s not directly impacting you. It’s easy to go about your shopping, your business, your routine, your “new normal”.

Our final stop today was Cabela’s in Cheektowaga. As an aside, we were hoping to find pepper spray as our two dogs were attacked last night by a neighbor’s off-leash dog—the second time this has happened in less than a year. This time unfortunately we spent the night at the emergency vet. Our dogs will be fine, but suffice it to say we were looking for a solution to mitigate against this risk in the future.

As we pulled into the parking lot of Cabela’s there was a white minivan on the corner with a family of four. The two young children were playing in the grass, the mother sitting inside the van watching the kids. The father was standing closer to the road, holding a sign that read:

Please help. We have fallen on hard times and need food. Anything you can do to help is appreciated.

My heart immediately sank into my stomach. I can remember what it was like to be poor—getting food at pantries, knowing what government peanut butter and cheese tasted like, and the jealousy of friends who didn’t have to eat store-brand cereal. I can remember my mother doing the best she could to shelter my sister and I from that struggle. See we may have been poor growing up, but we were never short on love or support—never once.

In the instant my car turns into the parking lot I can imagine how difficult it is for those parents to be standing on that corner, begging for food while trying to shelter their children from this struggle.

I turn over to my wife who had been looking in a different direction: “we’re helping that family”, I remark to her. She looked at me confused for a moment before seeing the sign. She pauses, “absolutely”. As we pull our car out to leave we see the parents trying to herd their children back in the car, presumably to leave. We pull up along side their car to see the kids doing what kids do—smiling, laughing, and playing.

We put our masks on and my wife motions to the man who waives back. He grabs his mask and pulls it tightly over his face. He then reaches into his car for plastic gloves. Before he can get fully suited up his daughter notices us and runs over to the car to take the money. As she takes it, she looks up and says “thank you, and god bless your family”. Her mother makes eye contact with us and mouths thank you. I’ve seen that look before—I know what that relief looks like. I know what that feels like.

As I roll up the windows my wife and I look at each other and start crying. I grab her hand and we head back home.

This is America now. It did not have to be this way. Not at all.

A bitter sweet exit.

This is the first dollar I ever made as an entrepreneur. I’ve kept it on my desk every day to remind me of the success, pain, and setbacks I experienced. I keep it to remind me of the persistence it took — of the lessons I learned about business, partnerships, and myself.

A little over a month ago we closed on the sale of the first business I ever started. Of course, this doesn’t count the satin flower business I started as a 7th grader or the failed newspaper in college. This was my first foray into entrepreneurship, my first legitimate business. The first time I invested real money in something. The first business I fell in love with. And ultimately the first business that broke my heart. It’s been a heck of a voyage. A bitter-sweet moment…ultimately more sweet than bitter.

We started the distillery in early 2013. I met my two partners at a networking event and a few weeks later found myself in business with them. We made some incredible products that I could not be prouder of. We created something nobody else was doing, pushed the envelope on the definition of rum, grew the business to regional distribution, and worked with some fantastic employees and industry partners.

More importantly, we made mistakes and learned to move forward from them.

At some point I’ll sit down and write about the lessons learned, but over six years later we found ourselves selling the business to a much larger company. It was a process that took nearly a year from our first meeting and for me, it was the first time I’ve been on the selling side of a transaction where I wasn’t acting as counsel. I was emotionally vested in this — terrified, anxious, and motivated we worked through evenings, weekends and early mornings to shepherd the deal across the finish line.

It was an exit, and one that I am proud of.

I certainly won’t be retiring off of the sale, but I am excited to see where the new owners will take the brand. I’m excited to continue working with entrepreneurs and to now have the time to reflect on what starting and growing a business taught me.

To all my fellow trickster gods and goddesses

Open-scene, a wintry Buffalo day not unlike most. On this particular day however I found myself walking into a board room. Like others of its kind, the minimalist room contained a larger-than-needed square table with seats — like what you’d expect to see in a Bond villain’s hideout. Except this happened to be a university research building on Buffalo’s burgeoning medical campus. Around the table were industry leaders — most of which twice my age. Some were founders of successful tech companies, others were prominent investors, and community leaders.

I set my bag down, grabbed some water, and pulled up my seat. **ah hem**, as I cleared my throat. “Great to see everyone”, I said as I opened my bag — pulling out a moleskine notebook and my laptop. I anxiously jotted down the date, time, and subject matter of the meeting, as I do with every meeting. I then began notating those in attendance.

As I wrapped up my legal-Pavlovian-ritual, I paused — finding myself asking one simple, yet anxiety inducing question:

what the [expletive] am I doing here?

Later, when I arrived home I was greeted by my ever-so-supportive and amazing wife (@amberasmall). She knew I had been excited about this particular meeting and inquired as to how it went. Fortunately for me I answered her honestly (Eventually). “It was great”, I remarked. The look on my face clearly left her with more questions: “then what’s wrong? You look melancholy”, she inquired. “Nothing. Honestly, it was a great meeting. But as I sat there with a table full of community leaders — people I admire and look up to, I could not help but wonder why exactly I was there”, I confessed.

“You are there because you are incredible”, she assured me. “And what you have is imposter syndrome.”

Imposter what? “Imposter syndrome. You have imposter syndrome. It’s typically something that women struggle with, but clearly you have it,” she quickly diagnosed me. Not in a clinical sense. More along the lines of a spouse putting their hand on your forehead to diagnose a fever. Of course, being the type-A, over-analyzing-attorney I am, I decided to spend some time on the Google machine.

“Holy [expletive]”, I said aloud, “this describes every damn thing I’ve felt. Ever.”

For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, Wikipedia has a lovely definition I’ll share with you:

“Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a ‘fraud’. Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve all they have achieved. Individuals with impostorism incorrectly attribute their success to luck, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be.”

This described perfectly the battle I have with myself almost daily. After several days of mulling this around in my brain, I decided I needed to talk to someone other than my wife to get an “objective” opinion. After all, she loves me and may be bias in her exculpation of my fundamental self-doubt.

Enter-scene, Lynn (we’re using a pseudonym here out of respect for Lynn’s privacy). Lynn has been a close friend since law school and someone I have a tremendous amount of personal and professional respect for. Much to my surprise Lynn confessed that she often felt the same exact way. Here’s a woman who has worked her ass off to get into a position that almost anyone would be envious of and she’s feeling the same exact thing. Well this got me thinking:

Maybe they’re both right. Maybe this is just in my head.

Be that as it may, it’s a vicious cycle.

Admittedly, by all accounts I have experienced “success”, and am incredibly blessed and humbled to have a career that I love (or two or three), a home in a community I love, incredible business partners, and an amazing wife I love more than anything who enables me to accomplish things I could never dream of as a kid growing up in the Adirondacks. But despite all of that I have found myself increasingly insecure about professional achievements which then motivates me to work even harder — driven by anxiety and a fear of failure. This hard work of course contributes to success which I then discount as luck or circumstantial, and the process starts all over again. If you haven’t tried this form of self-abuse, let me tell you, it’s a real barn burner.

Enter-scene, April. See a few months earlier I submitted a proposal for a paper to an academic legal conference at the urging of a fellow faculty member at UB School of Law. The paper was entitled “The homogeneity of developing unicorns: a survey of deal terms and diversity in early stage capital transactions”, and included research I have been working on as part of my role at UB School of Law.

“A long shot”, I said to myself.

Well, the paper was selected and with it came an invitation to the conference. Of course, now I had to actually go present on my paper in front of a room filled with a couple of dozen distinguished faculty members from law schools all over the country.

“Well surely this is where the house of cards comes tumbling down”, I thought to myself. Surely.

You’d think I’d be getting the hang of this by now but alas, here we are again. Then something magical happened as I was diligently preparing for the conference — I opened Twitter and randomly discovered the following had been posted by someone I followed:

I immediately started laughing at the absurdity of it all. I also saved the image and shared it to my personal Facebook page with a quip about how this pretty much summed up my feelings about presenting my paper at an academic conference. Surprisingly, friends and colleagues commented about how they feel the same exact way. We all got a pretty good laugh. We had, after all, fooled everyone.

As I was boarding the flight back to Buffalo from the conference I presented at (which was fabulous by the way) some friends and I joked in a group chat about how we would work “Trickster Goddess” into papers or books some day — perhaps in a footnote or a dedication. But as I sat down into my seat, I couldn’t help but pull out my phone and start writing.

To all my fellow trickster gods and goddesses:

This is for you. You’re not alone. Not even close. Revel in the fact you have fooled everyone.

Revel.

Plan B

Why did I choose Buffalo? I didn’t — at least not in 2002 when I first moved here. In fact, Buffalo was my fallback plan, my Plan B.

I grew up in a small town in the Adirondacks, and Buffalo was never a place I saw myself. It wasn’t until fate offered me an opportunity that the indirect journey to Buffalo began.

As a junior in high school, I was offered a spot in a foreign exchange program in Australia. Six months there during my senior year would mean missing half of my courses. But what other graduating senior from the Adirondacks would have a foreign exchange program on his resume? I was going.

My mother implored me to apply to at least one college prior to my departure Down Under — a safety school. That school just so happened to be the University at Buffalo.

I landed in Australia and Buffalo quickly became an afterthought. Shortly thereafter, 9/11 happened and my family and I decided it was best to extend my visa and my stay. I graduated high school there and, in doing so, missed most college application deadlines.

After traveling around the globe, working odd jobs to pay bills (on a related note, shearing sheep is quite difficult) and traveling thousands of miles around Australia, Buffalo, it would seem, would be my new home.

It was time to embrace Plan B.

I arrived here in the fall of 2002, an 18-year-old fully intent on transferring; perhaps to somewhere closer to home or somewhere on the coast. Buffalo, after all, had a reputation for absurd snowfall, Super Bowl losses and economic depression for the last quarter century. At a minimum, it was clear that the city had a moderate self-esteem issue.

So why did I choose to stay? Three things: The people. The lake. The community.

After I arrived, I made tremendous friends, was embraced by the Western New York community and found a much-needed connection to nature on Lake Erie. I started to love my new home.

So I stayed. I put myself through the undergraduate program at UB, UB Law School and then found the career opportunity I was looking for. I started a business, got married and found a home — all in Buffalo.

Over the last six years, Buffalo has experienced a drastic turnaround downtown, on the waterfront and in many of our neighborhoods. The city has seen unprecedented economic regeneration and investment, and has become a Buffalo that now holds its head high. Ultimately, I realized the positive difference one can make in this community and the personal and professional satisfaction that can bring.

Buffalo offers the opportunity for impactful community stewardship, the ability to make a career, to start a business, to make mistakes, to fail and try again, to raise a family, to afford a home — and to enjoy a quality of life that would be but a dream in most other cities.

Buffalo may still have a long way to go, but each of us can play a crucial role in that progress. And while we are at it, we can enjoy summers on Lake Erie, a rich history, world-class arts, delicious food, diverse cultures, the snow (yes, even the snow) and hopefully, before too long, a Bills team in the playoffs.

That’s why I chose Buffalo. That’s why I chose plan B.

Originally published at www.buffalonews.com on February 12, 2016.