This Day Was Darker.

There was a power outage in my area today. I was aware of this because my father who is visiting from the midwest called me from his dark seventh floor hotel room a block from my office to ask how long did this kind of thing typically go on in California.

Knowing I would likely be in the dark, I left for work at The Corporate Law Group with a battery lantern and planned to see how much work I could do. I got a cup of coffee on the way, and when I got to my dark office, I pulled up the blinds and started throwing away paper. It was all that I could do.

From time to time, I would shake my mouse only to remember again that the computer was down, the server was down, the land lines, the coffee pot, the clock.

I talked to my friend Milly in New York. I always perceive that Milly likes to talk no less than I do. It's rare to feel that Milly has to go before I do, but after telling her a few interesting business tales from the last week, I sensed that feeling you get, when the world of your friend is whizzing by faster than your world. She clearly had to go, and the reason was simple. We had been talking over ten minuntes.

I called my SEO consultant who I had been meaning to bug for two weeks. What could we do to get our site rank to number one? Yet, when I let him know I was knocked off line today, our conversation waxed instructional, then philisophical. The things you can do are limitless, he said. And I thought this was his job, but ultimately I was thankful he was teaching a man to fish so to speak. This conversation would have been entirely more literal and meaninglessly prompt if I had had power.

With everything off the hook (I even checked the fax machine) I started to do everything slowly, reading each word of a document before filing it, reviewing a letter with care, writing notes to someone in my office for the file.

The sensation was something you cannot experience with the internet, outloook, task lists, phone messages buzzing about. I was thinking of one thing at a time. There was some sanity in that. It was an out of body experience as I pictured a San Francisco Corporate Lawyer set in 1910 quietly penning a letter, or researching a case, or preparing questions for a deposition. There was nothing frantic about that kind of productivity. '

Slow and steady won the race.

Then, another thought occurred to me. This was not work at all. I had larger items to cross off my list, and none would be easily done without my hotmail and company emails, my downloads, my Windows, my Words.

So, I packed up my things, turned the lantern off, lowered the blinds and took off.

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