Why I’ve been quiet
A few months ago I stopped posting as much. Field Notes went from weekly to sporadic. LinkedIn went from daily to occasional. If you noticed, you weren’t imagining it.
I owe you the real reason, not the vague one.
In July I was diagnosed with autism.
I’m 40+. I’m a General Counsel. I’m a mom raising a child with a disability. I’ve spent ten-plus years in-house at tech companies, building things, managing people, holding a lot together at once. And I did all of it without knowing this about myself.
When people ask how I feel about the diagnosis, or what’s supposed to change now, I’ve been giving the same answer: it changes everything and it changes nothing. Both are true. I lived 40-plus years without this piece of information, and I was fine. I built a career, a family, a business.
I also held myself to expectations I was never able to meet, and never knew why. Now there is a why.
I needed to rebuild my life with the knowledge that I have an invisible disability, one where I need to give myself more time than a non-neurodivergent person would to rest and recover. That’s not an excuse. It’s information I didn’t have before, and I’m not going to keep operating like I don’t have it now.
It required time, and attention, and some quiet. That’s what the last few months have actually been.
So why am I telling you this on a professional blog about building AI-native legal functions?
Because I’m making changes to live a better life, and that includes what I spend my time on and how. Posting less was me giving myself the time I actually needed. If I need more time to rest and recover than I used to think I did, then a content calendar built before I knew that isn’t something I’m going to keep performing.
Here’s what that actually looked like from the inside: draft a free article, add more on top of it for paid subscribers, then promote it on LinkedIn. Three jobs, every week, on top of the actual job. That wasn’t sustainable for me before I knew why some things took more out of me than they were supposed to. It’s definitely not now.
So I’m going to one model. The Field Guide is the subscription. That’s where the real work lives — the templates, the frameworks, the actual build at Worksome. LinkedIn stays free, and that’s where you’ll find me sharing the sharp version of what’s happening in real time. No more splitting the same thinking three ways.
This is the last Field Notes post. If you want to keep reading what I’m building, The Field Guide is where it continues. Same honesty, same documentation, just one place instead of three.
More soon. Same honesty, different pace.
— Laura
