annegb has left some comments that I've thought about changing into a guest post or two, they are really good. Next time I think I'll ask her if she would mind doing a guest post or two on my blog.

I used to write legal articles, had a research agenda that I followed in ADR (dispute resolution), negotiation and professional responsibility/ethics, with a couple articles on Civil Procedure. Civil Procedure can be thought of as "the rules of the game" where the game is being a lawyer, and if you litigate, civil procedure is your life's blood in many ways. In those interests I started a web site, my home site, adrr.com. It still runs about 60,000 hits a week, mostly for people who are interested in "accessible" writing (that is often a dirty word from an academic standpoint) -- writing that they can understand and follow.

What is interesting in terms of where I was thinking is how grief and the experiences of loss deepened some of my thoughts, but how those concepts (such as there being five, not two, standard negotiation patterns) were an outgrowth of my exposure to Elgin's work long before any of these things happened. Grief is an overlay, not a building block, and it took far more than it gave.

Well, life has passed me by, I'm 49 and unlikely to start once again getting cold calls from people interested in having me interview for tenure track positions (though my wife got a couple -- which really tickled her, though she turned them down for the present). I'm lucky in that I like my work and my co-workers, love my children and adore my wife.

But I miss doing research and writing seriously -- in an academic way. I didn't get over 20 zeros in the first six months of the year by not being serious about my research and writing at work, but it is a different kind of writing. When Jessica took sick in 1992, a lot of things began to die, including a number of dreams and interests I didn't realize were dead.

So, I hold my five-year-old daughter's hands as she goes to sleep (it keeps the nightmares away for her), think and dream and love my family and remind myself that there is a lot more to life and that I am lucky to have the things and people and love that I have.

And I may yet write an article on how the clash over ethics in negotiation is a clash between styles, more than a clash between right and wrong -- though it may be that as well. There is so much and never enough time for all of it.