Lord, the sea is so big and my boat is so small

I got a bit of a frisson from this ABA Journal article about a former public defender striking out on his own:

A Conspiracy of One - After months of planning, hoping and hand-wringing, Michael Grossman is ready to start his new life as a solo practitioner

(T)oday... is Grossman’s first day at a new firm. His firm.

(H)e’s ready to tackle the day. Which for now means stuffing hundreds of envelopes with announcements that he’s opened a solo practice. Grossman is sending the cards to pretty much everyone he knows: friends, associates and lawyers he’s crossed paths with during his nine years in the Cook County Public Defender’s Office...

I completely understand this reason for the move:

He began to notice the violence was getting under his skin in ways it never had before. Before he became a parent, that is...

One murder case proved particularly troubling. “There were four dead bodies, and one was a 2-year-old,” he recalls. “I had medical examiner photos in my file that I didn’t want to look at. I didn’t want to take that home with me at the end of the day.” While the case alone wasn’t enough to make him quit, it contrib­uted to his growing malaise. “I believed in what I was doing,” he says. “I just wanted to do something different...”

But I suspect that this only leads to trouble:

Meanwhile, Grossman had become an avid blog reader...