starting over : The Art of Non-Conformity

Profiles

“You Just Have to Grab the Next Trapeze”: A Former Lawyer Reinvents Himself After Escaping to France

It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how far along you are in your career—there's still time for change. Bill Crow felt like he was living someone else’s life. Even though it was a very successful lawyer's life, he still wasn’t happy. So he took a year off and moved his family to France. Disconnecting from his everyday world allowed him to discover what he really wanted to do next.

I went to law school because it led to the professional career expected of me by my engineer father. I had a lawyer’s dream job in my home office in Vancouver, Canada: I had my own law practice, negotiating contracts on the phone for international clients. Best of all, there was no overhead, and I was able to pocket every dollar I billed.
I loved almost everything about my job: the low hours, the freedom, the money, being able to spend time with my kids, the praise of my clients, the work-from-home dress code (PJs).
The only thing I didn't like about my job was the actual doing of it. Practicing law was like sticking needles in my eyes.

Starting Over

The question comes up a lot: "If you were starting over with this project, what would you do differently?"

In my case, I probably wouldn't put the domain on chrisguillebeau.com. If you have chrisg.com, that works—but Chris Garrett got to that one first, and for some reason, a lot of people have a hard time with Guillebeau. Oh well.

I would try to have a better understanding of my readers from the beginning, instead of waiting 6-12 months to figure it out. And I would have an agenda and a clear message of what kind of change I was trying to create.