Peak Parenting

My ex and I broke up long ago. Breaking up is hard to do, for everyone involved. But we’ve done a pretty good job of co-parenting our modern family, including smoothly alternating kid weeks.   

Here’s what I wrote a couple of years ago in “Peak-End Parenting”:

Do you want to know the dirty little secret of a smoothly-handled amicable divorce? [Ed. Note: parents in rocky marriages should skip this part.] Alternating weeks with the kids is just about the ideal parenting arrangement. 

The kids and I enjoy our week together. Our days are packed with school, adventures, and screen time. Then, just as we are beginning to annoy one another, the kids go across town. They get to enjoy a week with my ex and his husband, two adorable dogs, and different screens. In the meantime, I can get errands done, go to chorus or the theater without splurging on a babysitter, and have adult time. Regardless of the week, we all get together for things like holidays and middle school choir concerts. By the time I miss the kids, it’s Friday afternoon and they’re back.

Ever since we separated, my ex has been married or in a relationship. The kids have benefited from a bonus stepdad. In contrast, I’ve been pathetically single the whole time. Nevertheless, despite the various plagues I’ve endured in the last few years, somehow I managed to keep our three wonderful children reasonably happy and healthy during my solo alternate weeks.

In “Peak-End Parenting,” I applied brain research to my single parent situation.

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman describes human consciousness as a combination of “the experiencing self, which does the living, and the remembering self, which keeps score and makes the choices.” By definition, the experiencing self only lives in this moment. But the remembering self – the sum of our memories so far – is also here in the moment, making our choices. Eventually, the future version of our remembering self will be the one looking back to evaluate our choices with the squinting clarity of hindsight.

It's impossible to live a life of permanent ecstasy. The next best thing – the path to happiness – is to enjoy the moment, while also making the best possible memories for your future self to benefit from. And after the passage of time, what we remember is not the details or duration of each good or bad experience, but rather how we felt about its peak and end. (With terrible experiences, we remember the nadir and the end.) 

This mental process begins even before the experience itself has ended. Admit it – how many times have you left a meager tip when you enjoyed excellent food but waited too long for the check to arrive?

So what is peak-end parenting? All I needed to do to ensure my kids end up with memories of an idyllic childhood was to make sure each alternated kid week included some memorable peak experiences, and that we ended the week on a high note.

This August my ex and his husband filed for divorce, and my ex moved to the Midwest to start a new life. The kids are staying with me fulltime, but they look forward to visiting Daddy and his new partner during school breaks. 

The last time I was a fulltime single parent was five years ago. In Fall 2014, my ex and his husband decided to move out of Seattle and start a new business. They ended up choosing Bellingham, where my parents happen to live. After eight months alone in Seattle as a fulltime single parent with three young children – still probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done – I was ready to cry uncle.  

Then a miracle occurred. In the summer of 2015, I was offered my dream position in Bellingham with the Washington Attorney General’s Office, as chief legal advisor to Western Washington University. It was the perfect fit, in the perfect place for my family. I loved everything about my job and the prospect of working at Western until the kids graduate and I retire – except for the fact that insecure and incompetent colleagues treated me like a noxious invader. My superiors’ actions triggered PTSD symptoms that continue today; their pattern of abuse and denial ended my professional career.

A couple of friends contend my job fiasco had a silver lining. They argue the benefits of moving close to family and to Vancouver justify the horrors I’ve endured. But my parents have lived in Bellingham since 1981. Dim-witted as I can be, I think I would have eventually figured out that Seattle has become a hellhole, and that it makes much more sense for the kids and me to be in Bellingham. Even without going through the whole PTSD thing. And even without knowing my ex would be moving out of state five years later.

I grew up Mormon, which explains a lot. Mormons are denied many of the pleasures available in other Christian denominations, such as alcohol, coffee, feminism, and homosexuality. Mormons also miss out on centuries of religious art and music. The church’s founders overreacted to what they considered to be the “apostasy” of both Catholics and Protestants by banishing anything that hinted of Popery, including Mozart and Bach.

When I was in law school and struggling with my Mormon heritage, friends invited me to attend services conducted by the Episcopal chaplain at Yale. After graduating and moving to Seattle, I joined my first choir – at Saint Mark’s Cathedral, which had and has a marvelous music program. Anyone who happens to be in Seattle on a Sunday at 9:30 pm should check out the traditional Anglican Compline service, where a skilled all-male choir fills the hushed and darkened cathedral with plainchant and anthems.

For the first time in my Mormon life, Saint Mark's regularly exposed me to great church music. I also embraced a liturgical calendar that offered something more than an endless series of bland Sundays. Maybe it’s all those years in academia, or my farmer heritage, but there’s something soothing about setting your internal clock to familiar annual seasons, with their rhythm of regular milestones.

It’s not just the big festivals of Easter and Christmas, or the annual pilgrimages of Advent and Lent. It’s also “Ordinary Time,” which refers to the huge chunk of the year between special occasions. The name comes from the practice of referring to each week with “ordinal” numbers, such as “The First Sunday after Pentecost,” or “The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany.” 

Have I mentioned lately that my favorite colour is green?

I’ve been alone with the kids for four months. There have been challenges and adjustments for everyone, but overall it’s gone surprisingly well. Still, everyone is looking forward to the kids’ first trip to Indiana the week after Christmas. Even with FaceTime, our children miss Daddy. And he’s missing out on being a part of their daily lives. 

I don’t know how other denominations pray, but “our daily lives” is a major Mormon cliché. And redundant – is there any other kind of life? We may remember the peaks and endpoints of particular experiences, but we live our lives right now. 

That’s been the big lesson of fulltime single parenthood. I don’t miss the routine of alternating kid weeks after all. To the contrary, I’ve escaped from the “hoarding” mentality of squeezing fun into a limited time period, and the challenges of planning parental bonding around an arbitrary calendar. Instead, there’s our ordinary family life together, day after day. Sure, I miss the freedom of more “me time.” I may not go on another date until they all graduate. But I get to watch three amazing kids grow up. 

Meanwhile, for the first time since I bought my doomed weekend cabin nineteen years ago, we live in just one place, full-time. No one is shuttling anywhere – just planning for regular vacations during school breaks. It’s exhausting and overwhelming and utterly ordinary. I love it.

Begging the Question

English Majors have awesome powers. We can punctuate a sentence without emoji. We know the different between the “plot” and the “theme” of a story. We could correct your grammar, but we usually resist the temptation.

English Majors also know language changes. Thanks to an amazing high school English teacher forty years ago, I can still recite the opening lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in incomprehensible Middle English (“Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote”). Despite some initial misgivings, I accept that “contact” and “access” can now be used as verbs, even though traditionally both were nouns. I'm an enthusiastic language nerd, not a judgmental curmudgeon.

As a writer, sometimes I’m frustrated by words whose meanings are in flux. Isn’t language supposed to be about communicating a particular idea to other people?

Over the years I’ve adopted several strategies for dealing with linguistic uncertainty. The most important is to identify your audience. For example, ordinarily I believe folks should split infinitives whenever it feels good. The English infinitive form of a verb consists of a phrase that begins with the word “to”: “to write,” “to complain,” etc. Splitting an infinitive means putting an adverb between the word “to” and the main verb: “to elegantly write,” “to constantly complain,” etc. We’ve been splitting infinitives for as long as we’ve been speaking English. However, a couple of hundred years ago a pedantic cleric denounced the practice, resulting in several generations of hyperanxious students. As “Grammar Girl” observes, 

The only logical reason to avoid splitting infinitives is that there are still a lot of people who mistakenly think it is wrong. If you write from a position of power, split your infinitives as much as you want. Be guided by the sound and flow of your sentence. On the other hand, if you have to please others or avoid complaints, it’s safer to avoid splitting infinitives. There's no reason to deliberately split infinitives when you know it's going to upset people.

I’d like to think of myself as a powerful writer. But when I know my audience includes crotchety old men – a demographic that is overrepresented in the judiciary, for example – I edit myself. In this case the language itself never changed. Just snobby attitudes. 

Of course, there are other times when I’m the snob. A large percentage of Trump voters, bless their hearts, use the fake word “irregardless.” Nevertheless, I’m confident even they will understand my intended meaning if I type “regardless” or “irrespective” instead.

Anyone operating in English must live with a degree of ambiguity. Generally that’s a good thing. Language is endlessly flexible. If necessary, we can always use verbal and nonverbal cues to nudge readers and listeners toward our intended meaning – even with contronyms, i.e., words that, depending on context, can have two contradictory or even opposite definitions.

For example, when the word “decimate” was coined it meant eliminating one in ten of something – originally one in ten soldiers in a Roman legion. Nowadays most people use "decimate" to refer to destroying or removing a large proportion of something. As a writer, you can use the context to signal whether you meant to eliminate 10 percent or 90 percent.

Usually it’s not worth the bother. The easiest strategy for dealing with words or phrases that require a lot of extra explanation is to avoid them completely, at least until you’re confident you have an audience who will catch your intended meaning. No one can focus on your message if they’re busy arguing about whether you referred to Yanny or Laurel, or wondering if the dress was blue rather than white. Fortunately English has more words to choose from than any other language in the history of the universe.

On the other hand, the gold standard for elegantly handling ambiguous words or phrases is to craft a sentence that makes sense under either common definition. I was thinking of this challenge last month when I received an odd letter from Solicitor General Noah Purcell, the State of Washington’s top courtroom lawyer. His letter begged the question – what was Noah thinking?

In all my decades of pompous writing, until now I’d never typed the words “beg the question.” The reason for my reticence:  you think the phrase means to raise a specific question for the reader or listener to consider. Go ahead, admit it. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just not an English Major.  

What “begging the question” really means is to argue in favor of your proposed conclusion by assuming the conclusion itself is true. The English phrase originally came from an awkward translation of the technical term used by Latin rhetoric scholars for this logical fallacy:  petitio principii. Begging the question is the quintessential example of circular reasoning.

In the Washington Court of Appeals’ opinion last month, here’s how the Court summarized the factual background of my pending lawsuit:

In November 2015, Leishman’s physician diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and serious codependency. Leishman informed the Attorney General’s Office of his new diagnosis and ultimately submitted a formal request for reasonable accommodation of his disability in February 2016. In March 2016, Leishman, an openly gay man, also filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, alleging that his supervisor, Kerena Higgins, made homophobic comments towards him. Leishman felt that his PTSD was triggered by Higgins’s comments and her micromanagement of his work. During a meeting with Higgins to discuss Leishman’s disability accommodation and Higgins’s comments, Leishman became aggressive, raised his voice, and pounded his fists. [As the Complaint states, this occurred when she accused me of faking my disability. The doctor who evaluated me opined that my response was typical.]

Higgins complained to the Attorney General’s Office about Leishman’s inappropriate conduct and the Attorney General’s Office placed Leishman on home assignment. The Attorney General’s Office retained Ogden Murphy Wallace to conduct an independent investigation into Leishman’s sexual orientation discrimination claim against Higgins, and Higgins’s allegation that Leishman was inappropriate during their meeting. 

Ogden Murphy Wallace drafted a report concluding that “Leishman has not established support for his complaint of discrimination against him based on sexual orientation as prohibited by Attorney General’s Office polices.” The Ogden Murphy Wallace Report also concluded that “Mr. Leishman’s conduct during the March 1 meeting [with Higgins] violated expected standards of conduct for his position as reflected in his job description.” 

I wish I could get my own summary of “My Story So Far” down to a lean 212 words. I’m jealous of Judge Mann’s pithiness. 

Brevity shouldn’t be so hard. As I recently wrote in “The Western Comma,” it turns out my fundamental argument actually is very simple, and quite English Major-y. There should be a period where the comma appears in the Court’s sentence I highlighted above:  

The Attorney General’s Office retained Ogden Murphy Wallace to conduct an independent investigation into Leishman’s sexual orientation discrimination claim against Higgins.

Period.

That’s what the Attorney General’s Office and Ogden Murphy Wallace said publicly when they identified Ogden Murphy Wallace’s assignment as part of the State’s rigorous and transparent contract procurement process. That’s what the lawyers from the Attorney General’s Office and their attorney-investigator told me. That’s what my Complaint alleges. And that’s the only way the rest of the story makes sense. My lawyer would never have allowed me to be interrogated alone for over an hour if she or I had known my employers were secretly looking for a way to justify firing me, rather than asking their investigator to conduct a thorough and independent investigation into a specific complaint regarding discrimination based on sexual orientation.  

It’s true that senior lawyers from the Attorney General’s Office made the mistake of asking their investigator to look into a separate supervisor complaint about my workplace conduct, without amending the contract documents. But that’s not what they told the public, my lawyer, and me. And that’s not what the State’s vendor contract authorized. 

So what’s the State and Ogden Murphy Wallace’s response to the damning evidence? It’s hard to tell – so far all they've ever done is stall and lie. I guess they’d say that when a gay employee identifies evidence of implicit and explicit homophobia in the workplace and his employer hires an outside attorney-investigator to look into his discrimination complaint, there’s nothing wrong with these experienced employment lawyers secretly focusing on a second unrelated personnel investigation topic instead. 

Actually, there’s a lot wrong if a private investigator’s sleazy business plan consists of telling government employees and other members of the public that he’s “independently” investigating Subject X, when the investigator and his agency customers are actually working together to smear their target with dirt about Subject Y instead. This deceptive practice is particularly troubling when it prevents a disabled employee from enjoying the benefit of the employment lawyer he hired to represent him in connection with Subject Y.

That’s why I filed a Complaint in court suing Ogden Murphy Wallace, “Seattle’s sleaziest bottom-feeding law firm®,” and its partner Patrick Pearce. That’s why I fought and won on appeal when Defendants had my Complaint dismissed on an erroneous technicality. That’s why I submitted bar complaints about the lawyers’ unethical conduct. And that’s why I will keep speaking truth to power about dishonest attorneys and abusive bureaucrats – until someone in authority finally begins to listen.

Dos Bros – Washington Solicitor General Noah Purcell 

and his boss Attorney General Bob Ferguson

Back to the letter I received last month from smarmy Solicitor General / erstwhile Attorney General candidate Noah Purcell. Actually I was merely cc-ed. Noah addressed his letter to the judge who wrote the Court of Appeals’ published opinion in my lawsuit. On behalf of the State of Washington, the Solicitor General asked the Court to revise its decision and tone down its description of my supervisor Assistant Attorney General Kerena Higgins’ central role in my termination, in order “to avoid needless harm to a public servant.” Seriously – you can read Noah’s obsequious taxpayer-funded letter for yourself.

After a couple of weeks of Trump impeachment hearings, Noah’s letter makes me proud to be the whistleblower type of public servant, rather than the political hack type who prefers to malign us and cover up official wrongdoing.

As the Court of Appeals observed – and as the Solicitor General necessarily acknowledged in his letter – for purposes of the Court’s opinion “the factual allegations in the complaint are accepted as true.” Opinion at 5 (citing Northwest Animal Rights Network v. State, 158 Wn. App. 237, 241, 242 P.3d 891 (2010)); see also Purcell letter at 3. This includes the Complaint’s amply supported allegation that the investigator chose to ignore extensive evidence of homophobic conduct – because the State’s employment lawyers wanted to instead use the Ogden Murphy Report as a pretext to fire me based on secret complaints by Ms. Higgins and others about my workplace conduct.

Nevertheless, Noah’s letter asked the Court of Appeals to whitewash its opinion and “remove its description of factual allegations made by the plaintiff against an Assistant Attorney General that are untrue.” What evidence did Noah rely on in arguing that Ms. Higgins and her colleagues are the victims of “untrue” accusations of homophobia? “The report prepared by Ogden Murphy Wallace.” 

Anyone familiar with basic principles of logic would know better than to rely on the disgraced Ogden Murphy Wallace Report itself as your only evidence that Assistant Attorney General Kerena Higgins couldn’t possibly have said or done anything improper. Solicitor General Noah Purcell’s letter to the Court of Appeals begs the question – what was Noah thinking?

www.xkcd.com

Click here for more information about my lawsuit against Ogden Murphy Wallace PLLC and Patrick Pearce

The Western Comma

Even though it’s still November, the sun came back today. After waiting for the plumber to finish roto-rooting our sewer line, the dogs and I decided to go on their favourite walk. Our route includes a long loop though neighbouring Western Washington University. When we crossed the “Quidditch Quad,” the dogs became adorably tangled in a pack of teens and parents on their campus tour. 

The student guide had met us before. He told the campus visitors “Bear and Buster are among Western’s many amenities.”

Last week when I was in Seattle I ran into an old friend. He sheepishly told me he’d given up reading my blog posts. I happened to be in town for tedious lawyer meetings that had already triggered either déjà vu or PTSD. So I steeled myself for another complaint about too much painful law stuff. 

Even worse:  “They’re all too damn long.”

Ever since my friend Nancy interrupted my endless elevator speech a couple of months ago, I’ve been terribly self-conscious about size. By some measures, good editing involves removing as many words as possible. Yet look at the summary in “My Story So Far”: a crushing 1,711 words. Plus six pictures. And a zillion hyperlinks.

Unfortunately, I’m still trapped in legal disputes where every other party follows the same two-page playbook – their only options appear to be “Stall” or “Lie.” As a result, I don’t have many opportunities to compare my nonfiction storytelling skills with anyone else’s.

So far there’s one other writer who’s interested in getting at the truth about my experience with PTSD, lawyers, and bureaucrats – the judge who recently wrote the opinion in my case for the Washington Court of Appeals. 

Lawyers and judges prefer their written work product to follow a predictable format. Maybe it’s because we want to keep our focus on the merits of each case, rather than hiding behind distracting bells and whistles. Or maybe it’s because we’re a hopelessly hidebound profession on the road to extinction. (It’s still an open question.) Anyway, a huge proportion of all legal writing – including most court opinions – begins with a short “factual background” section. Ideally, these summaries objectively encapsulate the evidentiary record and describe the parties’ claims in a manner that permits either side to argue for their position, and that helps readers quickly figure out what the case is about.

Lazy legal writers tend to pad their fact sections with too much extraneous information. Meanwhile, overzealous advocates can't resist applying too much spin. Paring your fact section down to the objective essentials is hard work. 

Here is how the Court of Appeals summarized my story so far. It's a lean 212 words:

In November 2015, Leishman’s physician diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and serious codependency. Leishman informed the Attorney General’s Office of his new diagnosis and ultimately submitted a formal request for reasonable accommodation of his disability in February 2016. In March 2016, Leishman, an openly gay man, also filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, alleging that his supervisor, Kerena Higgins, made homophobic comments towards him. Leishman felt that his PTSD was triggered by Higgins’s comments and her micromanagement of his work. During a meeting with Higgins to discuss Leishman’s disability accommodation and Higgins’s comments, Leishman became aggressive, raised his voice, and pounded his fists. [As the Complaint states, this occurred when my supervisor accused me of faking my disability.] 

Higgins complained to the Attorney General’s Office about Leishman’s inappropriate conduct and the Attorney General’s Office placed Leishman on home assignment. The Attorney General’s Office retained Ogden Murphy Wallace to conduct an independent investigation into Leishman’s sexual orientation discrimination claim against Higgins, and Higgins’s allegation that Leishman was inappropriate during their meeting. 

Ogden Murphy Wallace drafted a report concluding that “Leishman has not established support for his complaint of discrimination against him based on sexual orientation as prohibited by Attorney General’s Office polices.” The Ogden Murphy Wallace Report also concluded that “Mr. Leishman’s conduct during the March 1 meeting [with Higgins] violated expected standards of conduct for his position as reflected in his job description.” The Attorney General's Office terminated Leishman on May 7, 2016.

The Court of Appeals opinion goes on for several pages to explain how various legal authorities apply to these facts in this specific procedural posture. The end result of the appeal is my complete vindication:  the Court reinstated my claims against Ogden Murphy Wallace PLLC, “Seattle’s sleaziest bottom-feeding law firm®.” It only took two years for the legal system to correct the judge's mistaken dismissal of my claims based on an inapplicable technicality.

The Courts of Appeals’ three simple factual paragraphs aren’t exactly the summary I would have written if I were a judge. Frankly they’re shorter than I’m capable of at this stage of my recovery. Nevertheless, the court fairly and concisely identified the essential players; summarized the background context; and included all the essential factual information a reader would need in order to understand the court’s legal analysis. 

One sentence from the Court of Appeals’ factual recitation encapsulates the entire tragic story:

The Attorney General’s Office retained Ogden Murphy Wallace to conduct an independent investigation into Leishman’s sexual orientation discrimination claim against Higgins, and Higgins’s allegation that Leishman was inappropriate during their meeting.

As the pro se plaintiff in this case, I happen to know the highlighted text is the crux of every subsequent legal dispute related to my doomed employment by the Attorney General’s Office as Chief Legal Advisor to Western Washington University. 

Interestingly, the same sentence also jumped out to me as an experienced editor. When someone is trying to trim down a document, you look for certain quirks of language. Some of the literary “tells” signaling potential bloat include excessive use of passive voice, clichéd phrases, run-on sentences, and mismatched parallels. One example of that last category is when a sentence includes a list containing only two brief items. My eyebrows go up whenever a writer marks his or her subconscious need to pause for breath by putting a comma before the “and” connecting two supposedly equal and closely linked concepts. 

Such as the comma in the highlighted text from the Court of Appeals’ opinion.

Despite all the overlong blog posts, my argument actually is very simple. And quite English Major-y. There should be a period where the comma appears in the Court’s key sentence:  

The Attorney General’s Office retained Ogden Murphy Wallace to conduct an independent investigation into Leishman’s sexual orientation discrimination claim against Higgins.

Period.

That’s what the Attorney General’s Office and Ogden Murphy Wallace said publicly when they identified Ogden Murphy Wallace’s assignment as part of the State’s rigorous and transparent contract procurement process. That’s what the lawyers from the Attorney General’s Office and their attorney-investigator told me. That’s what my Complaint alleges. And that’s the only way the rest of the story makes sense. My lawyer would never have allowed me be interrogated alone for over an hour if she or I had known my employers were secretly looking for a way to justify firing me, rather than asking their investigator to conduct a thorough and independent investigation into a specific complaint regarding discrimination based on sexual orientation.  

It’s true that senior lawyers from the Attorney General’s Office made the mistake of asking their investigator to also look into a separate supervisor complaint about my workplace conduct, without amending the contract documents. But that’s not what they told the public, my lawyer, and me. And that’s not what the State's vendor contract authorized. 

The sad result speaks for itself. The final Ogden Murphy Report ignored extensive evidence documenting explicit and implicit homophobia. Instead, the Attorney General’s Office had their lawyer-investigator whitewash my superiors’ conduct while repeating a litany of secret complaints from the same dishonest and bigoted bureaucrats who’d already decided to get rid of me – all without giving my lawyer or me a chance to respond. To the contrary, my former employers refused to listen when my lawyer and doctor tried to tell them about the relationship between my disability and my frustrated behaviour. Then when they realized their mistake they tried to cover it up with more lies and abuse. That seems wrong to me. 

So I guess I’ve managed to edit my elevator speech down not just to a single sentence, but to a single period replacing a suspicious comma. Now let’s see what the other side can say to top that. 

Click here for more information about my lawsuit against Ogden Murphy Wallace PLLC and Patrick Pearce

Maximum Leverage - A Rock Bottom Story

November is the cruelest month. Many of the darkest times of my life occurred in this light- and joy-deficient time of year:  when I was suicidally depressed (three decades apart at Brigham Young University and at Western Washington University); getting diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and severe codependency; being pressured into signing a Settlement Agreement with fraudulent and unethical government lawyers; losing my home; losing my virginity; breaking my heart; health and family crises; being abused by malignant narcissists at every level; and having my whistleblower lawsuit erroneously dismissed on a frivolous legal technicality two years ago.

This November, I feel better than I've felt in my entire life. I give all the credit for my improved mental health to my family, and to writing. In particular, this month marks two and a half years, two hundred and fifty essays, and over 300,000 words of therapeutic, honest, sometimes sad but often funny storytelling and public advocacy.

To celebrate Movember, today's blog essay brings together many of the great themes you'll find at the heart of all my stories:  Pivot, Rock Bottom, My Story So Far, Mindset, This is what 'Impact Litigation' Looks Like, Dear Evan Hansen, and of course "I Come From Good People."

This summer I published a series of connected blog essays about my former employers at the Washington Attorney General’s office. I accused them of a pattern of unethical, incompetent, and dishonest conduct, and presented extensive documentation supporting my accusations. My subconscious apparently determined it was time to say everything I had to say about my employer-abusers, tie it all up in a bow, and move on. 

I intended to post one final essay in the "My Story So Far" series, to be called "Pivot," in which I described how I’m cheerfully moving on with my life. But I still didn’t know how the Court of Appeals was going to rule on my pending appeal. As the summer passed without a ruling, I started drafting two separate “Pivot” essays discussing the relationship between the eventual litigation milestone – win or lose – and the new directions my life and writing were taking regardless.  

After the Court of Appeals ruled in my favour, I published the cheerier version of my essay. In “Pivot,” I announced that I was “done writing about my former colleagues and my workplace trauma.” It was time to write about other things.

Shortly after I hit “publish,” I discovered the insurance defense lawyers representing my opponents had made a strategic blunder, the “impact litigation” equivalent of getting involved in a land war in Asia. As I sheepishly acknowledged this week in “Re-Pivot,” during the coming months I expect to continue writing about the challenges facing disabled people – as well as about what happens when lawyers start lying, and then won’t stop. In the meantime, I'll end this particular trilogy by sharing what’s left of the less cheery version of my draft “Pivot” essay.

When I originally started writing my Pivot essays, I saved my drafts in separate “win appeal” / “lose appeal” folders. The two versions eventually evolved to “verb” and “noun” alternatives. 

Here’s how the published essay “Pivot” began:

The verb “pivot” means to reach a point and then turn in a new direction. Like a basketball player. Or the Titanic. 

Here’s the beginning of the rock-bottom version of “Pivot,” which I intended to use if I lost my appeal and was forced to declare bankruptcy:  

piv·ot  /ˈpivət/

noun:  the central point, pin, or shaft on which a mechanism turns or oscillates.

synonyms:  fulcrum, axis, axle, swivel, pin, hub, spindle, hinge, kingpin, gudgeon   

The noun is the older, more literal meaning of the English word “pivot.” The verb usage reflects the word’s subsequent metaphorical expansion to cover any change in direction. But the key is the original image of a fulcrum.

An effective pivot gives you enough leverage to move a particular obstacle. As the classical mathematician and engineer Archimedes supposedly said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

Everyone quotes Archimedes when they’re looking for a big stick. Smart, funny people find the right fulcrum.

If the Court of Appeals had affirmed the trial court’s erroneous legal ruling, they would have eliminated my last hope for obtaining reasonable financial compensation for the injuries to my family. The Court would have also slammed the door shut on clearing my name and salvaging my professional reputation. Plus Washington’s easily-twisted “whistleblower protection” statute would have stuck me with an unjust bill for the other side’s legal fees, and forced me into bankruptcy. By many reasonable child-welfare measures, that significant risk meant rock bottom for my small family.

Some would say it’s been another tough year for the Leishmans. We are tough people. But kind. And funny. As I described in “Mindset” and other essays this year, I’ve learned to recognize even the biggest challenges as opportunities for growth and change. In particular, money is just money. 

By the time the Court of Appeals issued its decision in September, all that was left of the worst-case version of my “Pivot” essay was a noun and a couple of witty quotes about being broke and unemployed. I even made a list of the ten most likely outcomes that might come to pass over the next couple of years. The worst possible scenarios all involved the kids and me moving in with my sainted parents on the other side of Bellingham.  

                                                                                             

Is that really so bad?

But don’t take my word for it. 

Currently one of my nephews lives at my parents’ house while he finishes high school in Bellingham. On Monday nights I invite him over for dinner at our house so my parents can get a break, and so my unruly children can practice their table manners. 

As Oliver and I were peeling potatoes last week, I overheard my daughters tell their cousin how lucky he is because he goes to Squalicum High School and gets to eat Grandma food every day.

I pointed out that I was busy making delicious mashed potatoes for ungrateful mouths, and suggested my parents have been phoning it in since they retired. Most nights Grandpa probably picks up pizza from Little Caesar’s. My legalistic arguments were met with deaf ears and rolled eyes. Everyone knows I can’t compete with Grandma. 

When you have this much leverage to work with, rock bottom can’t scare you. It doesn’t matter how heavy your burdens become, or what direction you end up going next. My children and I are blessed because we come from good people.

Previously in Rock Bottom Stories: “Pandora's Box.”    Next: “Better-Ish.” 

Re-Pivot

The Orson Welles I grew up with was not the brilliant director of Citizen Kane, nor the handsome provocateur behind the War of the Worlds radio scare. Instead, I got the obese wine pitchman of the 1970s.

Ever since, I’ve wondered how the folks at Paul Masson vineyards knew it was time to sell that particular bottle of Pinot Chardonnay.    

As I’ve written before, hydraulics have become my primary metaphor for the various stages of the writing process. Droughts and deluges. Sluicing and mixing. Pressure and release. 

Fluid imagery is particularly useful because it accommodates both natural and unnatural analogies. Inspiration can arrive like a gentle dew distilled from heaven, or like a flattening tsunami. Later in the process, words take their time simmering under pressure in your subconscious, or fermenting in various vats.

So how does a writer know when it’s time to open the valve labeled “publish”?

This summer I was inspired to finally finish a series of connected blog essays about my former employers at the Washington Attorney General’s office. I accused them of a pattern of unethical, incompetent, and dishonest conduct, and presented extensive documentation supporting my accusations. After a couple of years of research and pondering, my subconscious apparently determined it was time to say everything I had to say about my employer-abusers, tie it all up in a bow, and move on. 

Nevertheless, after reading the first essay in the series, "Unrighteous Dominion," my mother called to ask if I was about to embark on the kind of semi-deranged rant I was known for in my early days of living with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I assured her there would be no ranting. To the contrary, I’d already written most of the final essay in the series, to be called "Pivot," in which I described how I’m cheerfully moving on with my life. 

I told my mother I'm “done writing about my former colleagues and my workplace trauma, at least until some interesting new development comes along.” At least that's what I wrote in "Pivot."

Although I recognized my life was heading in a new direction, I still didn’t know how the Court of Appeals was going to rule on my pending appeal. As the summer passed without a court ruling, I started drafting two separate “Pivot” essays discussing the relationship between the eventual litigation milestone and my life and writing.  

Meanwhile I was surprised by other important life changes, like becoming a fulltime single dad again and moving into a new house near campus with three kids and two dogs. Life is good. Fortunately, I also won my appeal. On October 3, 2019, a month after the Court of Appeals issued its decision and the kids and I settled into our new routine, everyone got to read the cheerier version of my essay. 

A few minutes after posting “Pivot,” I realized I’d jumped the gun. 

Litigants in Washington are entitled to one appeal. In most cases, the Court of Appeals has the final word. Like the United States Supreme Court, the Washington Supreme Court accepts only a small number of appeals each year. Unsuccessful civil litigants like Ogden Murphy usually don’t waste time and money petitioning for discretionary review at the Supreme Court level. Nevertheless, thirty minutes before the court deadline, an automated email notification informed me Defendants had filed a Petition for Review.

No one over at Team Ogden Murphy actually believed the Supreme Court would accept review. Nor do they believe there’s a realistic chance the Supreme Court would actually reverse the Court of Appeals’ sensible and straightforward legal ruling. Rather, Defendants and their truth-impaired insurance defense lawyers were grasping at any opportunity to stall. As usual. 

The Washington Supreme Court grants fewer than one in ten requests for discretionary review. But there is one sure thing:  Defendants’ last-minute filing guaranteed we’d add at least another five months to the two years I’ve already lost while waiting for the Court of Appeals to correct the trial court’s legal error. As Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

On my way to chorus rehearsal in Vancouver that week I was seething. Not because Defendants Ogden Murphy Wallace and Patrick Pearce exercised their right to seek discretionary review of the Court of Appeals’ decision, or because their Petition for Review was predictably sleazy, or even because I’ll be waiting until at least Fall 2020 to finally have my day in court. No, I was frustrated because as a lawyer and a writer, I knew I wouldn't be able to resist filing an Answer to Petition for Review. I couldn't think of anything I could say to the Supreme Court that would make it even less likely for them to accept Defendants’ half-baked appeal. And I used to write exactly this kind of brief for a living.

Then like the Grinch I had a terrible, horrible, wonderful idea – why not try to make it more likely that the Washington Supreme Court will take the case? 

The result is described in my recent blog essay “This is what ‘Impact Litigation’ Looks Like.” I have joined the strategically clueless folks at Ogden Murphy in urging the Supreme Court to accept review. This case indeed presents important issues of substantial public interest that should be determined by our Supreme Court. Hopefully the Court will take this opportunity to provide guidance to lower courts and the public – not just about the proper interpretation of Washington’s whistleblower protection statute, but also about how the legal system should respond when lawyers start lying, and then won’t stop.

My original “Pivot” essay began like this:  

The verb “pivot” means to reach a point and then turn in a new direction. Like a basketball player. Or the Titanic. 

As I pivoted, I promised my parents and my lawyers that I would shut up and move on. I meant it. But thanks to the megaphone provided by Defendant Ogden Murphy Wallace PLLC, “Seattle’s sleaziest bottom-feeding law firm®, this fall’s new direction has involved the kind of shuffling pivot that most referees would call traveling. 

Long ago, a grateful law firm partner gave me a bottle of vintage champagne. I still don't know what Dom Perignon’s 1999 vintage actually tastes like. For years it was impossible to identify any occasion that would justify opening a $200+ bottle of champagne. 

Eventually I zeroed in on three possibilities:  becoming a judge, saving my house on Whidbey Island, or finding a real boyfriend. All three turned out to be hopeless causes. The bottle is still sealed in its box.

According to Wine Spectator, the Dom Perignon 1999 vintage is “best from 2008 through 2020.” I’m running out of time. Fortunately, I’m confident there will be interesting developments soon in my ongoing litigation and public education campaigns. Whatever happens, I’ll be ready to write about it. Then propose a toast. And then write some more.

Click here for more information about my lawsuit against Ogden Murphy Wallace PLLC and Patrick Pearce