In the 16 work days I've been back to work, I've written 7 demand letters. I'm a demand-cranking machine right now! It's funny because when I worked on the defense side, almost ALL of the demand letters that came across my desk were, at the most, a very minimalistic two pages long. Now I'm on the other side and I'm cranking out ultra-detailed demand letters. It's a lot of work but I honestly enjoy it. I love sifting rigorously through all the available evidence trying to piece together a demand. It's like a treasure hunt. How many claims can YOU find?!
BUT....there IS one part I'm not particularly fond of -- calculating future general damages. See, there's this handy little chart called a Life Expectancy Chart. It basically tells you, based upon some super complicated statistics and equations, how much longer you can expect to live based upon your age and sex.
It's depressing.
When I think about being a 20-something (even if that's a LATE 20-something), I feel very young. I feel like a huge portion of my life is still in front of me. (Until I realize I'm probably only 5-7 years from whar some would consider middle-age...ew!). But when the remainder of my life is reduced to a number....it seems....so final....and not so very long after all. I do NOT like a little chart reminding me that I can expect to live only about 52.8 more years! That chart makes me start to feel all itchy and twitchy.
52.8 more years.
52.8!
By that time, my baby will be 52.8 years old (see, I CAN do math!).
It seems like both a considerable amount of time and a very inadequate amount of time all at once. A lot can happen in 52.8 years. At the same time, it's just a tiny speck in the timeline of the universe. I kind of want to be more than just a speck. It's so overwhelming to think that eventually my life will be swallowed up by the sea of forever.
52.8 is not my favorite number. I think I'm going to count the remainder of my life in candy bars instead. If I eat one candy bar a day, thats approximately 19,284.67. I have just over 19,000 candy bars left! I like that number much better.
By extension, today, I am 10,226.72 candy bars old.
Sh*t: I wipe it, put up with it, and get it done. These are the adventures of a mommy lawyer.
I'm sure you'll live to be over a hundred! Heck, if Kurzweil is correct and nanotechnology improves exponentially, we can all live forever. Yeah, google it. It's awesome. And then there's the 'calorie restriction' people who plan on living 3-4x the average lifespan...who knows what the future holds?!
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