2005 - It was a very good year.

Amazing, in a word. I started out 2005 as a university piano technician on medical furlough - unsure about what the future held in a way of a career for me at the University of Michigan, unsure about what the Dickens was going on with my hands. By about April, I was aware that the problem in my hands was not going to go away. The hamate and lunate bones in my hands (bilateral) have what I learned is called a hamatolunate or "type II" articulation--one bone connects with another in such a way that, when I make a fist, one bone grinds against the other. [Read more about the condition here. Caution: Extremely dry medical journal materials...unless you're really into this kind of thing.] Piano technicians make fists all day long holding screw drivers and tuning levers and all manner of other hand tools. Do that for 18 years and your hands will eventually start aching--and that's precisely where I was. Surgery to alter the offending bone would only create more damage and was not guaranteed to eliminate more of the same pain in the future. No surgery. No career as a piano technician at the University of Michigan, either.

The day on which the announcement that I was out of the piano business at the School of Music was made, I got an email whose subject line said, "Is it true?" A colleague/client/friend wanted to talk to me about working with her on an internet publication project. She needed someone do to legal background work for various aspects of the project.

The Internet Publication Project had been started by Prof. Mary Simoni in 2003. Among the goals of the project was development of a new record label for the University of Michigan - well, the School of Music to begin with. Block M Records was essentially "born" on Dec. 8 [U-M News Service Press Release]. The Media Showcase was set up as a place where prospective students could come to listen to performances by students and faculty. One more piece of the puzzle is forthcoming - online distribution of the recordings being released through Block M Records. The last report was that a contract had cleared the distributor's legal department and was headed for their finance department....perhaps it was lost at the company's "holiday" party?

What I get to do, in all of this, is receive recording project proposals, submit them to a committee for review and selection, perform copyright clearances where necessary, send out and receive contracts, track the recording projects from start to finish, and a whole host of other interesting steps. I get to work with some really nice attorneys from the Office of General Counsel, the Division of Research Development and Administration, and the Senior Technology Licensing Officer at the Office of Technology Transfer.

Back in Sept. 2002, when I started working on a Bachelor of Science in Legal Assisting at Eastern Michigan University, I didn't anticipate that I'd land a job working as a legal assistant at the University of Michigan. I think I'd only located 7-8 individuals, there, whose job descriptions either said they were paralegals or legal assistants. It just didn't look very promising. But, eventually, I wanted to leave the piano technician job and start a new career as a legal assistant. I figured I'd just bide my time until something came open. I mentioned the scheme to a few people but never expected things to develop the way they did.

I've had a belief, for some time now, that nothing happens that's unintended - that things happen for a reason and its our business to figure out what the reason is. I imagine it's kinda like paddling out beyond the surf and just sitting there waiting for the right wave to come along.

Well, better check out for the day. I'll have more thoughts, soon enough.

Hey, Dad! See you when I run, this afternoon.