Treasure The Good Days
OFF THE RECORD
Treasure the Good Days
October 11, 2026
Today was a good day.
I realize that may not sound particularly newsworthy, but considering the events of the past several weeks, I feel like somebody ought to alert the media. Possibly declare a state holiday. At the very least, I think it deserves to be documented before life remembers I exist and decides to get creative again.
Because today was genuinely, wonderfully, unexpectedly good.
And I intend to enjoy every minute of it.
First of all, today is my son's official seventh birthday.
Seven. My little boy is seven years old. I'm not entirely sure who authorized that, because I distinctly remember bringing him home from the hospital approximately fifteen minutes ago, but apparently time continues to pass without consulting me.
He is happy. His little sister is happy. We got up early this morning, and the two of them have been playing together beautifully.
For anyone unfamiliar with the dynamics of small children, this is an achievement worthy of its own paragraph.
Nobody is crying. Nobody is accusing the other of a felony. Nobody has come running to report that somebody looked at them wrong, touched their belongings, or committed some other unforgivable offense against childhood.
It's been lovely.
And really, seeing my little boy happy on his birthday would have been enough to make today a good day.
But apparently, the universe decided to throw in a few extras.
Last night, my dad and I stayed up late talking.
Just talking. Laughing. Discussing life and whatever else came to mind. It felt a little like old times, back before adulthood became an endless series of responsibilities, difficult decisions, and bills that somehow manage to arrive with more consistency than anything else in life.
There was something comforting about it.
I'm thirty-eight years old. I'm an attorney. I own a law practice. I have three children. I've spent a substantial portion of my adult life solving other people's problems, and I've gotten reasonably good at it.
My own problems, however, have proven to be considerably less cooperative.
Apparently, I can navigate complicated legal disputes, negotiate settlements, and manage a business, but when it comes to figuring out my own life, sometimes I still need to sit around talking to my dad.
And you know what? I'm perfectly fine with that.
Today, Dad and I decided to ride around Ruston.
Now, if you've been following along with my recent adventures in personal and professional restructuring, you know that I've been trying to figure out how to make some significant changes in my life.
I want to downsize my law practice. I want to relocate. I want to continue practicing law, because despite everything, I genuinely love being an attorney. I just don't particularly love the part where running a law firm consumes every waking moment of my existence and occasionally attempts to consume the sleeping ones, too.
I'd like a smaller office. Less overhead. Fewer moving parts. A manageable workload.
Perhaps even an occasional afternoon when I don't feel personally responsible for the continued operation of the entire legal system.
Ambitious, I know.
And I want a home for my children and me. Somewhere we can settle in, make memories, and build a life that feels a little less like we're constantly waiting for the next catastrophe.
I've known what I wanted for quite some time.
The problem has been figuring out how to pay for it, arrange it, accomplish it, and somehow continue functioning as a reasonably competent adult while doing so.
Today, for the first time, things started making sense.
We found what may be the perfect office.
It's smaller, which is exactly what I want. It's right off a major highway, so my existing clients would still have easy access to me just twenty miles down the road, and relocating to Ruston would open the door to new clients as well.
And here's the beautiful part.
The math works.
The rent would be more than covered by the money I'm saving by reducing my staffing expenses and overhead.
I actually sat there thinking about it, running the numbers in my head, trying to figure out what I had overlooked.
Surely there was a catch.
A hidden expense. A structural defect. A provision in the lease requiring me to surrender my firstborn child.
Something.
But no. It actually made financial sense.
Imagine that.
Even better, the office is in an area where another female attorney practices. We went to college together and were friends, so I would already know someone there.
That might not sound like a particularly significant detail, but it is to me.
I've spent a lot of time lately feeling like I've had to figure everything out on my own. The idea of being in a professional environment with someone familiar, someone who understands this profession, is genuinely comforting.
And my parents are here.
That's another piece of this that matters more than I can adequately explain.
I wouldn't be moving somewhere unfamiliar, trying to rebuild everything without anyone nearby. I'd be moving closer to people who love me, people I trust, and people who have been helping me hold things together while I've been trying to figure out how to put them back in order.
So, the office looked promising.
Naturally, we decided to keep driving.
And then we found the house.
Lord, the house.
Built in 2019. Beautiful. A wonderful location. A bedroom for each of my children. Land. Room for a garden. A pavilion area.
And a treehouse.
Not some pitiful collection of crooked boards nailed to a pine tree by an overly optimistic father with a cordless drill.
An actual, beautiful treehouse.
I could immediately picture my children playing there.
I could picture their bedrooms, their toys scattered across the floor, the backyard full of noise, and all the little ordinary things that make a house feel like home.
I could picture planting a garden. Sitting outside in the evenings. Watching my children grow up there.
I could picture a life.
And then came the part where I normally have to return to reality, remind myself that I am not independently wealthy, and abandon whatever ridiculous dream I've managed to develop in the previous fifteen minutes.
Except this time, the house was within our price range.
Within. Our. Price. Range.
I nearly wanted to ask somebody to check the listing again.
Because apparently, today was the day that both the real estate market and basic arithmetic decided to cooperate with me.
I don't want to get ahead of myself. We haven't bought a house. We haven't signed a lease. There are still inspections, negotiations, contracts, financing, and approximately a thousand opportunities for somebody to complicate the situation.
I am, after all, an attorney. I understand that nothing is certain until the documents are signed, the money changes hands, and preferably everyone has left the closing table without threatening litigation.
But for the first time, these weren't just things I wanted.
They were things I could actually see happening.
Even the potential sale of my current office building, one of the biggest uncertainties in this entire process, is looking promising.
And that matters because this whole plan depends on several pieces fitting together.
For months, I've felt like I was trying to solve a puzzle where somebody had hidden half the pieces, eaten the box, and then informed me that the puzzle was due by Friday.
Today, I could finally see the picture.
And somewhere on the drive back to my parents' house, I started crying.
Dad looked over at me.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm just so relieved," I told him.
And that was exactly what it was.
Relief.
I've cried plenty of tears over the past several months.
I've cried because I was sad. Because I was angry. Because I was exhausted. Because I was overwhelmed. Because I couldn't figure out how to fix things that desperately needed fixing.
I've cried because I felt trapped in circumstances I couldn't seem to change, no matter how hard I worked or how many different solutions I tried to come up with.
But these tears were different.
I wasn't crying because something terrible had happened.
I was crying because something good might actually happen.
Because I could finally see a way forward.
Not some imaginary future where I win the lottery, develop a completely different personality, and somehow acquire another twenty hours in every day.
A real future.
An office I can afford. A home within my budget. My parents nearby. My children with their own rooms and a backyard to play in. A smaller practice where I can continue doing work I love without feeling like the business itself is swallowing me whole.
A life that feels manageable.
A life that might even be enjoyable.
And I cannot adequately describe how much relief there is in that possibility.
There's something almost funny about being a grown woman who has spent years building a career, raising children, managing employees, and handling other people's crises, only to find herself crying in the passenger seat of her father's car because she finally believes she might be able to manage her own life.
But there I was.
Thirty-eight years old, riding around with Dad, crying over office space and a house with a treehouse.
And I wouldn't trade that moment for anything.
Because I think what I've been missing lately isn't necessarily happiness.
It's hope.
Not the kind of hope that requires pretending everything is wonderful when it clearly isn't. I've never been particularly talented at that, and frankly, I don't intend to start now.
I mean the practical kind of hope.
The kind where you can look at your bank account, your responsibilities, your children, your career, and your future, and say, "Okay. I think I can actually do this."
That's a different feeling altogether.
And today, I felt it.
Now I'm standing outside in this rather warm October weather, which is apparently Louisiana's way of reminding us that fall is more of a suggestion than an actual season.
I'm thinking about getting some work done and possibly working out.
Both are admirable goals. Whether either will actually happen remains to be seen.
But I'm happy.
Not because everything is fixed.
Not because I've suddenly developed a flawless five-year plan or because every problem in my life has politely packed its belongings and moved elsewhere.
I'm happy because today was good.
And I've realized something.
We spend an extraordinary amount of time remembering the bad days.
We remember the conversations that hurt us. The disappointments. The things we lost. The mistakes we made. The nights we couldn't sleep because we were trying to figure out how on earth we were going to get through whatever was happening.
We replay those moments in our minds until we practically know the dialogue by heart.
But how often do we give the good days that same attention?
How often do we stop in the middle of an ordinary afternoon and recognize that we're living through a moment we may someday wish we could have back?
Today, my son turned seven.
He doesn't know what commercial office space costs. He doesn't know what it takes to sell a building, relocate a business, negotiate a lease, or qualify for a mortgage.
He doesn't know how many numbers I've run through my head trying to figure out how to make a better life for us.
And he shouldn't.
He's seven.
His biggest concerns today should be birthday celebrations, playing with his little sister, and whatever other critically important business occupies the mind of a seven-year-old boy.
That's exactly how I want it.
I've spent so much time trying to build a better life for my children that I think somewhere along the way, I almost forgot that I was supposed to be living that life with them.
Not just planning it. Not just paying for it. Not just worrying about it.
Living it.
And today, I got a little glimpse of what that might look like.
A happy little boy. His sister playing beside him. A late-night conversation with my dad. A drive around Ruston. An office that makes sense. A beautiful house with a treehouse.
And tears of relief instead of despair.
I know this week may bring another difficult day.
Knowing my luck, it'll probably arrive with supporting documentation, a deadline, and somebody demanding an immediate response.
But tomorrow hasn't been invited into today.
Today belongs to my little boy, who is officially seven years old.
It belongs to a good conversation with my dad and a drive through a town that may soon become home.
It belongs to the possibility of something new.
And it belongs to a woman who, for the first time in a long time, looked at her future and didn't immediately feel exhausted by it.
I've written plenty about the hard days.
I've documented the disappointments, the uncertainty, the heartbreak, and the sheer absurdity of trying to keep a life together when it seems determined to come apart.
Those stories mattered.
But this one matters, too.
Maybe even more than I realized when I started writing it.
Because the good days deserve to be remembered just as much as the bad ones.
So I'm writing this one down.
Today, my little boy turned seven.
And his mama remembered what it felt like to look forward to tomorrow.
Judith Layne Hampton
Attorney at Law
Hampton Law Firm, LLC
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