Looking for work... Ever since 9/11, paying clients are more scarce. Of course, I could always fall back on my career as a gifted opera singer, or invest in a sure fire pyramid scheme. Or... I could find a regular job with a paycheck doing what I do anyway - representing people in a jam. So today I went for my first job interview in about 10 years. It's a not-for-profit type place, the kind that I applied to massively after getting out of law school and passing the bar. They are very active in a lot of interesting projects and missions, and it seems like the type of place I could do something interesting and good. I get there and am doing OK, not too overbearing ( I hope), and then the interviewer, a girl from Buffalo who is younger than my son, asks me the trick question "where do you expect to be in five years, what are your long term goals?" Now, when you get to be a certain age, this is the type of question that tends to throw you. Should I say the truth? "I'll probably be dead, or marginalized as an old person", or should I invent some lofty goal on the spot- "My long term goal is to be elevated to the Supreme Court", or "I expect to be working on a book while serving time for civil disobedience." Once you reach a certain age, long term goals and five year plans become superfluous. They have their place when you are young, to sort of whip up your enthusiasm and get you off the couch, but as life continues, experience teaches that you should do as much as you can right now and do it as well as possible, because this may be as good as it gets. I'm not good at this, I stammered something about retirement and working as long as possible and then helpfully added, "but I may be dead."