Live, Laugh, LLMs

A Year in Review

Hello Friends in the Computer,

Since we last spoke, I had a birthday, made it through the one year anniversary of being laid off from a job I loved and what I thought was going to be a long term gig, and then….I went to Disneyworld.

Also a cruise. Hello from Elegant Night. Sequins are so heavy to wear but it’s almost worth it to look like a human disco ball. Also apparently my new thing is to burst into tears during character meet and greets so that’s fun.

Don’t worry, I took Him too…

Note the homemade PVC pipe water cane. It is always very popular with other cruise guests.

And then it was Thanksgiving…

After medaling last year, Dad retired from competitive racing so we volunteered as course marshals for the Valpo Turkey Trot. Then we had dinner with family and I only had to make pie. Best thanksgiving ever.

I meant to write a separate about each one of those but got otherwise occupied. Now that’s it’s a snowy Sunday with nothing to do but watch my dad work on the train under the Christmas tree (…don’t ask), I thought I’d do an omnibus catch up post.

I grow old … I grow old …I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

I turned 48 last month.

I have what I guess is a weird relationship to growing older. I actually sort of enjoy it. For those of you that haven’t followed the Sarah Cinematic Universe closely, I’ve had a lot of medical problems in my life, starting from birth, and for much of my life - and until relatively recently, actually - I generally assumed that I’d never live to old age.

(Over the summer someone told me that they thought I’d been very brave in my career choices and if you have same impression, let me assure you that I’m not brave in my professional choices or anywhere. It’s more that I never thought I’d live long enough to face the consequences of my actions.)

That’s starting to change.

In fact I went back and forth with myself about whether or not to even say exactly how old I am. I don’t worry about my physical appearance and showing any effects of aging. (Although I have been recently reassured that I don’t look my age, although that’s probably less do with my lack of grey hair and wrinkles and more that my personal style and affect can best be described as “toddlers section at Target X muppet”.) I do worry about starting to be considered too old to be thought of as “competent enough for a career in technology.”

As a GenXer, I feel like I spent a large part of my career waiting for Boomers to retire and now that they are, their leadership positions (formal and informal) are going to Millennials and GenYers since they’re

digital natives

grew up with iPhone in their hand

children of Rihanna born in the fires of chaos

I don’t know, cooler or something. I can’t point to an exact instance and say “I was discriminated against because of my age” but over the past few years I’ve checked to see who got hired for jobs I’ve applied for and it’s…interesting…to see who did get the gig.

I don’t know how to overcome this potential prejudice other than the way I’ve had to overcome all the other things I have working against me in this field. But as someone who started their career as a Bright Young Thing filled with new ideas about how to use tech and changing social paradigms, it’s weird to feel…old.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

So it’s been a year since I’ve was laid off and I can now definitively say that the whole experience was really fucking weird. I mean, it actively sucked, too. I had a good financial cushion, slid almost immediately into another sweet gig that in some ways was an improvement, and I’m completely fine with going to work at Costco or something. And I was still, in retrospect, really messed up by the experience.

There’s dealing with the change and mourning of lost relationships, of course. My situation had the added drama of people rubbernecking and trying to unravel the mystery of what happened. (Or even better, people crowing that they knew it would all eventually fail anyway.) But for me the most challenging part was wondering if I…should do something else with my life.

Was I supposed to get some new certification? (Another graduate degree is an absolute no go.)

Write a book?

Start a business?

Finally learn to knit?

I decided to just listen to my inner voice, do what interested me, and see where it lead.

As it stands, I…

• Volunteered a lot for three professional organizations (and paid an ungodly amount of money for the privilege 🤡)

• Finally put my ideas about legal tech education into a draft format and released into the world

• Made some decent contributions to my day job and did some fun unofficial (read: unpaid 🤡) consulting on the side

• Went to AALL Annual and ILTAcon - that was A LOT of travel and I’m glad the 2024 versions are closer to home

• Started working on creative side hustle

• Worked A LOT in my gardens and took home a few blue ribbons at the county fair

• Took some fun trips with my dad and went to Disneyworld. Twice. Disney Adult rebrand forthcoming. 🤡

I don’t know that I have any long term goals or plans for the next year beyond “keep on keeping on.” It was a good year and if nothing else, I have an even more clear idea of what I DON’T want to do, and I think that’s just as important.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Now, you know we were eventually going to talk about Generative AI and LLMs.

To be quite honest, I’ve run hot and cold on it all year.

Sometimes I think it will be as transformative and yet as embedded in daily life as mobile technology or Web 2.0. (I like to tell people to think of it more as Web 2.0 for data analytics other manipulations rather than the content generation stuff.) The A2J possibilities alone are absolutely breathtaking.

BUT THEN…

I think about all the work that needs to happen for this type of tech to be successfully implemented in the legal world (and some areas of the legal world have more challenges than others) and…I sigh at how this is probably going to be a missed opportunity. Assuming it actually can do everything that developers say it can, which I’m not 100% sure of. And assuming the tech overlords in Silicon Valley don’t make it potentially more problematic to use than it already is.

I have to admit that it took me a while to even take it seriously. ChatGPT was released November 30, so about 2.5 weeks after I was laid off. That miiiiiiight have affected my attitude. I think my current status is taking it seriously but maybe not literally? And that approach has never ended horribly before so I think we’re good.

Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

I try to never forget how lucky I’ve been, both professionally and personally. Sometimes it feels like I’ve failed to take advantage of the gifts I’ve been given but I like how things have turned out for me so while there are definitely regrets, it seems to have ultimately worked out for the best.

I guess.

Sometimes it feels like I’ve achieved nirvana and sometimes I think that maybe things got so bad in recent years that I completely snapped the tether. Whatever it is, it doesn’t hurt, so I guess it doesn’t matter either way. None of my business.

But anyway, I am very thankful for where I am in life, the people and things that have brought me here, and the fact that I can still feel challenged and stimulated by my career and professional circles (but also not have the Sunday Scaries starting at 2pm Saturday every week).

So that’s me. Hope things are great with you.

Take care,

Sarah

p.s. One last picture because it cracks me up. My dad is in the watching stuff business and, brother, business is doing good.

p.p.s. Also…just because it’s a nice picture.