I was an attorney for a long time. Four decades. And four plus years ago I went to court for the last time, said goodnight to my legal assistant for the last time, and rode the elevator down twenty-four stories for the last time. I exited our building onto Denver’s 16th Street Mall and into whatever would come next.

When asked, “who am I?” I no longer respond by saying, “I’m a lawyer.” And that was never “who I was” anyway. That was always just “what I did.”

People often ask me to talk about how I came to be an attorney and how I moved on. I think people are looking for advice. But I’m not qualified to tell the world how to decide to become an attorney, how to be an attorney, or how to stop being an attorney. There are many such books for sale, and I’ve consumed more than a few of those in my decades as a practicing attorney. I just don’t find myself skilled enough to advise anyone to be – or avoid being – an attorney. I also challenge the notion that there’s cookie cutter, one size fits all, advice to give on those topics. What to do with a life, and when to move on are very personal decisions, different for each of us, and don’t lend themselves to convenient or useful rules of thumb.

I can just report my facts. Here are several.

Like so many things in my life, becoming an attorney just sort of happened. One day I went to college, graduated, needed money, drove a forklift for a while, and the next day I found myself in law school. And the next day I passed the bar exam, started clerking for a bankruptcy judge, and began life as an attorney. Just like that. Well, maybe not quite the very next day but after all the years of practicing bankruptcy law, time and space can sometimes get a little distorted and the continuum of the dimensions can warp.

Did I enjoy being an attorney? Not always. Sometimes I hated it, and the law firm world; sometimes I tolerated it, and sometimes I may have even liked it. But mostly, as is true for so many attorneys, “like” was not typically the first word that crossed my mind when I pondered each day of my law life. I liked my life as an attorney more when I learned to accept the parts of the practice of law that drove me crazy and that I couldn't change. For that, I can thank the life as an attorney for helping me learn that I can’t control everything, and, at times, I can control nothing.

At times, the practice of law frustrated me, and just as often, it energized me. Often, I made the people close to me miserable, and I believe I can attribute that unfortunate truth to the practice of law, rather than myself, although I can see how that’s debatable. I sometimes frustrated my partners in the law firm; I believe they may have occasionally enjoyed having me around, just a little... but they don’t have to admit it.

Now four years removed, I realize I didn’t always – perhaps even not often – really hate the practice of law. But, on balance, “like” was and still is a hard word for me to use in close proximity to the phrase “practice of law.”

Even when I was practicing law, I liked to dream. Maybe, I needed to dream. To dream: the transitive verb, to think of the possibilities. For me back them, possibilities other than a life in the law. But the law got in the way of dreaming. It resisted me and fought me. In my years of working in law firms, as I reserved the right to seek greener pastures, I saw things, felt things, laughed at things, cried at things, loved things, despised things, became resigned to things, and tried to set aside time to dream of other things besides trying cases in bankruptcy court.

Life as an attorney taught me to enjoy being busy, so in my law afterlife, I’m busy, but I no longer give out legal advice, write briefs, go to court, make oral arguments, call witnesses to the stand, cross-examine witnesses, and deal with my law partners on a day-to-day basis.

But I don’t feel like I retired. I don’t like the word “retire,” because there’s no “retirement” for me – rather, I chose to do many other things. For example, I smile a great deal. I swear less. I spent much of my law life not making the world a better place. Now I try to make the world a better place, little by little, day by day, person by person, project by project, cause by cause, and I hope I’m making up for lost time. As Vincent Van Gogh said, “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” In my law life, while I wasn’t bored, I lacked passion or at least if I had it, I eventually lost it. Now I have passion, and there’s no boredom in my afterlife.

And that afterlife? I’ve pivoted to a life of writing books (five since I hung up the wingtips. You can find them on Amazon and other booksellers), non-profit service, and music (I’m not great but I love it). But you write what you know. Right? So, my books of fiction are legal and financial thrillers.

Even in this next phase of my life, I still think about my journey away from the law life. I’ve concluded that for me, the law loomed, and it consumed, fumed, presumed, and at times entombed me. To this day, it lurks in the classroom, the conference room, the boardroom, and the courtroom; sometimes it assumes; it’s often the legendary professional jealous mistress, hiding within a law firm with a nom de plume that sounds austere, thoughtful, august, and distinguished... and sometimes, just sometimes, despite itself, it manages to bloom. It’s larger than life. It makes few concessions for dreamers, and perhaps dreamers have no right to expect concessions. It took me a long time to learn this: while there may be better ways to go through life, there are many, many worse ways to go through life. Really.

At some point, however, it’s time to part ways. And for me, it was time to move on. Turns out, it was a good decision for me. The law afterlife is good ... so far.