My interpersonal skills dropped off the low end of the scale yesterday.

Not once, but twice yesterday someone was a good enough friend to call me on my bullshit and say that a remark of mine was out of line.

Guilty as charged, your honor.

If you only knew how much I’d like to avoid personal responsibility and blame this on last night’s full moon.  Alas, no can do.

From my personal and interior point of view, the matter is made worse by the fact that my mouth and brain were disconnected by my worry over a case in which I bear personal responsibility for bad lawyering.  That’s actually pretty rare for me over the past 20 years and I’m not happy with myself or the situation.

I let my personal disappointment with my professional performance spread bad juju to my personal relationships.

And, it wasn’t even merely the two friends who confronted the situation.  The lovely Juliet took some poor behavior in stride, forgiving me without ever saying a word, but clearly disappointed in my behavior.

I’m sure there are others who had the misfortune to encounter me — store clerks and other anonymous souls — who put up with my moodiness.

So, this OU-TX weekend, I’m thinking about this out loud on this blog.

As many of you know, I’ve made some changes in my life lately.  Principally, I’ve put a much higher priority on my work and devote much much more time to my law practice.

I haven’t done so quite as thoughtfully as I might, it occurs to me.

When working expanded in my schedule, other things took a back seat or disappeared from my day altogether.  I haven’t given any thought until today what was left in and what was left out.

One of the things, I now realize, that has been absent from my life that once was a focus of my life is “getting centered”.  Formerly, there was a time every day (or nearly so) that I read, prayed, got perspective, meditated, or just was quiet and undisturbed.

I knew that I had lost my daily blogging and journaling and thought little about it, but it’s now more clear that those things helped me keep my perspective and articulate what was going on with me internally.  Those things were in my life for a reason: they help me understand what my place is within the universe and what my own role is in life, especially my own life (whether I shall be the hero or the villain in my own life, Charles Dickens).

When I’m thinking about how I messed up my case and what I can do to escape the consequences, I’m not in the now, I’m in the past and the future.  When I’m thinking about how I can cover my own ass, I’m not considering how I affect others, what they will feel if I unleash my cynicism and bile.

One of the things I said yesterday for which I was called down directly implicated my sobriety.  One of the many reasons I quit drinking was that alcohol destroyed my filters and I very often awoke with a sense of dread and remorse about something I’d said the night before.  Over the years, I’ve destroyed many relationships by the simple expedient of being an asshole with a penchant for vivid language and hyperbole.

I’ve also today had occasion to remember that my estrangement with one of my sisters is about how much like me she is and how much I hate to see my own character flaws reflected in her (“you spot it, you got it” is the AA aphorism).  She does not seem to be able to be happy and feel good about herself unless she’s tearing me down and it wears on me.  Now, I must confront the idea again that I sometimes leverage myself up by pushing others down.

This redeployment of my time and energy seems to have exacerbated this problem.

Another way of looking at the problem is that I’ve been so concerned with my own stuff that I’m inconsiderate of others’ feelings.  This is particularly piquant personally because I’ve gone so far as to break off romantic relationships because I was so important that some woman’s inability to pay 100 percent of her attention to me 100 percent of the time offended me — how could they be so inconsiderate? 

What is most distressing for me about this is the sense of hopelessness and despair that I will ever be free of these character flaws.  I have the sense that I can be made aware of the problem and that I can analyze the problem and can even mitigate the behaviors, but that it’s such an integral part of my character that I’ll never be rid of it.  It’s a neverending fight for truth justice and the american way, Superman.

I’d like to just stop here and say, OK I have a problem with my mouth and I’ll try to be better and I’ll make sure I have a time every day to reflect and that will help with the problem.

I can’t do that.

The reason I can’t just stop at that point is that the problem is metastic. 

I’ve not written, composed a poem, painted, done sumii for a very long time.  I know that I do those things not just to express my creativity, but also because it feeds and nurtures my soul and enhances my life.  I’ve let my time budget get out of control and I’ve been thoughtless about my priorities.

Playing off a theme near and dear to a lawyer’s heart, that time IS money, it’s like I’ve needed clothes and bought an Armani suit and needed to eat, so I went to Coach House for steak au poive, but meanwhile, I can’t pay my electric bill and the lights are off at the house.

Lately, work has overwhelmed all other time priorities.  Lately, my relationship with the lovely Juliet (whatever the hell that relationship is) has been a high priority.  Lately, politics has consumed my interest and I spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet pouring over polls and commentary.  Then there is the immediate shiney object on the ground that distracts me like the cat barf I just found on the carpet that caused me to stop this blogging and reach for the cleaning materials and the mental note to talk to MCARP about same.

I have not been very good in my life with monetary budgeting and now I find myself forced to confront the consequences of that and pay attention to financial priorities and I am very much struggling to do at 57 what others learn much earlier.

I am not very good at keeping to a schedule and a schedule is very much like a budget, except for time rather than money.  Now, I find myself forced to confront the consequences of that and pay attention to my priorities and I am very much struggling to do at 57 what others learn much earlier.

I know I’m not the first one to struggle with a budget or a schedule and that there’s wisdom out there so that I don’t have to invent the wheel all over again.

However, after one says “here’s how to make a budget” or “here’s how to make a schedule”, there’s still a problem:  what, after all, ARE my priorities, either financial or timely?

I would like to have some balance because it seems that having balance would ameliorate other problems, like running off my mouth because I’m so feckless and inconsiderate when I don’t pay attention to getting centered or running up credit card debt because I’m so hedonistic I go to coffee and ride around with the top down instead of billing files.

Once one is budgeted, scheduled and prioritized, where is the spontaneity and surprise?

I bet I’ve seen, scanned and dismissed a thousand stories about women trying to balance work and home.  That’s their problem, I thought.  How is that problem different from my problem?

My reality is that I can budget, schedule and prioritize, but eventually will simply tear all that down because I so hate being regimented that I despise even my own authority to do so and blame the world for that regimentation rather than myself.

All at once, it seems, a minor problem of a social slip — a gaffe directed at a friend — becomes a psychological crisis of conscience.  All at once, it seems, a simple task of making a budget and a personal schedule becomes an existential crisis and a philosophical question of what is important in life.

Hell, I’m not sure I have the time and money to budget, schedule and prioritize because I’m on my way to a sports bar to watch OU play Texas and then to an art studio tour and I’ll hook up with Juliet for a party after that and …