@Kamala – Glad you liked it! I think you’re referring to You Are A Badass, by Jen Sincero. (And then the follow up, You Are A Badass At Making Money). Not entirely my cup of tea, but I think Meredith really liked them, and I’m all for people finding self-help books that work for them!

I would like to know which self-improvement book was Meredith referring to that she was reading right now. I got her love of the week book, castle of water, but could not understand the other two books that she mentioned.

I read this to my husband who is an attorney and he 100% agreed with your comments.

@Byrd- it is a fascinating topic, though I’m not sure I have much expertise in this. We moved 7 years ago, but not particularly because we needed to. We were in complete control of the timing. None of the kids were in school yet (only two were born). Moving in general is a giant pain. Even packing up my kitchen so it could be renovated consumed far more time and energy than I care to relive any time soon. Keeping a lid on the crazy is an apt description.

I will say I disagreed with a lot of the Q and A section. I’m not a lawyer but my husband and many friends are and I can’t emphasize enough how much the field has changed since the recession. It did use to be true that most lawyers could get good jobs but that is really not the case any more. It is extremely important to go to a very highly ranked law school if you want to practice in a competitive law field. Or if you want or if those jobs that will allow you to pay off debt in a year – you need to go to a good school AND do well. I know several people who have had to do the equivalent of lawyer temp work because they could not get real jobs with benefits etc straight out of school. You also have to be willing to relocate to where some jobs are. I thought lawyers could practice wherever but it turns out many fields exist primarily in major cities – and really just a handful of cities in some cases like my husbands job. Unless this person is in NYC or maybe SF and Cambridge/Boston very few places have both really good schools and most kinds of jobs. So This person should be super honest with themselves about the opportunities that will be available if They don’t want to move at least once.

If this person just wants more independence but likes the firm they are at they should look into seeing if the firm will make some sort of agreement to hire them later to keep that door open.

@Marcia – I somewhat chafed against the idea too. But I’ve seen other virtual companies suffer from employee burnout because people feel the need to be reachable 24/7. To me, the whole genius of email is that it is asynchronous communication. I send it when it works for me, you read it when it works for you. But enough people feel compelled to respond to their managers/colleagues/clients instantly that they experience trouble with it. So as a manager you have to figure out how to manage that compulsion.

It was fascinating to hear of the virtual office rules. At first I thought it might be inhibiting but then there’s the upside – no emails at night 🙂