My time and attention has been on family, not work, the past few months. After some 40 years of it being the other way round, this has been both instructive and novel. Whether I had wanted to or not, I have stood back from the day job. Instead my priority has been settling my frail uncle safely in to a nursing home and getting to grips with his affairs - his bank accounts, tax return, subscriptions, bills, receipts, direct debits, standing orders, council tax, community alarm, flat, neighbours, the rest of the family.
And I have found myself standing on the edge of his life and that of my aunt, now dead some 10 years. Going through their papers (my uncle has kept everything) I found a cutting from The Guardian, a short piece, Little boxes of past lives, by Peter Preston - about how the memorabilia stored in our garages and lofts will mean little to those who one day clear them.
My uncle is still alive, but clearing his - their - flat, I have been doing just what Peter Preston and his siblings and step-siblings did when his stepmother died. And as I have gone through my uncle's brown cardboard boxes, files of papers, treasures and bric-a-brac I have travelled the years of their lives, 40 before marriage, 40 married, and my uncle's last lonely 10. And I keep thinking not just about my uncle's prescience in keeping that article, but that his plunge into dementia has robbed me of the opportunity to have the conversations we might otherwise have had - not just to fill the gaps in his life but in those of his wife's. For it is just the bare bones of those two lives in the boxes; the remainder - their real lives and the life they lived together - is now for ever locked up in his head.
So, conversations.
When I set out on 1 August, my aim was to help lawyers and marketers understand each other. To bridge a gap that I experienced first hand in my two years as a Director of Marketing.
But time with and for my uncle has allowed me space to reflect on the challenges that law firms, law firm leaders, and lawyers have to meet - and the need for honest conversations about them. For sure conversations are held in law firms, but for all those that are, there are as many that aren't. Worse, there are those worthless conversations which convince us we have had them, when we haven't.
And in all of them it is as much about what is not said as what is.
Over the next few weeks this website will change, to reflect a widening of the focus. No longer just conversation about where lawyers and marketing meet, it will be much more about how best to have that much wider range of conversations - and in particular the ones lawyers would prefer to avoid.
Not quite starting again - I already have three projects on the go, each at various stages. Listening to clients, to learn what they are really thinking; a project to find out why law firm leaders and partners avoid discussing what may happen next; and a project to look at why, even now, we don't feel able to talk about mental heath and wellbeing in law firms.
But a change of direction.
