I’m sorry.

Beautiful topics can always hold their own, no matter where you strew them. – Michel de Montaigne, On cowardice, the mother of cruelty.

What Montaigne didn’t know about blogs!

At a family event last weekend, my cousin Jon, a lawyer, asked me how the blog was going. He’d looked at it during its onset, but thereafter found it difficult to figure it out.

“Oh, it’s a mess,” I said.

“It’s a mess,” he agreed.

We were both correct: it’s a mess.

I am sorry. I’m having a great time writing and I don’t think the writing is a mess, but even I have trouble figuring out what is where.

I’ve set out to do too many different things.

  • First, I wanted to lay out, in my own conscientiously eccentric way, the stages of a lawsuit, so that if and when you find yourself involved in one, you will have been prepared—by me, a plaintiff experienced in most aspects of lawsuits.

A reasonable intention for a blog.

  • Second, I was going to use the story of my two concurrent lawsuits as an outline for my first purpose—the stages of a lawsuit from the plaintiff’s POV, blah blah.

That intention is more blook than blog. And I sense I’ve been telling you more than you really want to know. Or rather, you may want to know it, but probably not in blog form. Maybe you’d prefer to wait for the book. (I would.)

Besides, a good blog post is a stand-alone sort of essay: it should not be dependent upon previous chapters of the story. It should be nice to read on that one day you happen to read it, without requiring much background.

  • And then, third, to layer it up way too warmly, I’ve been posting what I’ve called Sidebars, my brief opinions linked to newspaper or magazine stories concerning law, lawyers, lawsuits and the like. I even managed to yank Lady Gaga into this, not without blushing.
  • Hold on a sec: Lady Gaga yanked herself into this. She’s the one who should be blushing.

Actually, these Sidebars by themselves would make a decent blog. They’d do better alone, without (1) my lawsuits and (2) the stages of a lawsuit.

(Sigh.) I’ve tried to clear things up. How?

  • No longer will I call brief opinions Sidebars. Each will now have a relevant title, not simply Lawsuit of the Week or whatever. And I’ve filed what used to be called “Sidebars” into one or more of my other legal categories, such as “Who Sues?” or “Who Shouldn’t Sue?” or one of the lawsuit stages.
  • I’ve de-cluttered the look of it. On the right side, under the “search” box, is a drop-down menu called Chapters of the Story where are all my previous posts are filed.
  • I’m so annoyed that blogs store posts latest first. Since this is a sort of book, I’d like the postings to be stored earliest first. You know. The way a book reads. The WordPress format disagrees with me. We’ve argued bitterly for hours. The Format always wins.
  • From now on, I’ll try to keep the stories of my lawsuits short-ish, and emphasize the stages of a lawsuit.
  • I may not succeed.
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