Movin', Movin', Movin' (And Some Disapprovin')

At the end of March, our firm moved out of Century City (where they -- and I -- have occupied various office buildings since 1992) and into a building on Olympic Boulevard near the 405.  Overall, I'm happy with the new location.  It's closer to my house (I can walk to work in less time than it used to take me to drive); it's near the "Little Osaka" area on Sawtelle, and the restaurant choices for lunch are terrific; and my new office is nice, with a southwest view that takes in most of the Westside from Sepulveda/Olympic down to Westchester, and west to the ocean.

But every move has its problems.  Ones that have manifested so far:  The box containing the contents of my desk has gone missing.  (That of course raises existential questions -- such as whether I really needed that stuff anyway?)  The glass on the framed poster of the Walla Walla Balloon Stampede also went missing in the move, except for a shard still stuck in the frame.  My old office had built-in bookshelves, and the new office doesn't -- so I've been waiting and will wait for a while for a new bookcase to be delivered.  Meanwhile, my books remain in about 13 boxes on my office floor.  (How did I accumulate so many books?  And that's after going through the usual pre-move purging ritual.)  And there have been other issues that I won't go into.

The gradual kudzu-like spread of e-filing with federal courts has also raised issues.  Used to be that when an attorney moved offices, he just had to notify the state bar and file change of address notices in his cases (which in itself is a chore).  Now the attorney must also go to the Website of each federal district court in which he is admitted (for me, every federal district court in California) and register a change of address.

The philosophical might say that with every move, we give up something, get something new, and are handed another chance to reinvent ourselves.  The more practical would say that we accumulate crud; and moving forces us to choose which crud we really need.  Come to think of it, the philosophical might say that too.