There’s a scene in the movie Adaptation where a chaotic, obsessive orchid thief named John Laroche explains his former love of tropical fish.

Not casually. Intensely.

This man had sixty fish tanks. He learned Latin species names. He skin-dived for rare fish.

Then one morning he woke up and thought:

“Done with fish.”

That’s it.

No dramatic breakdown. No identity crisis. No six-month healing journey in Tulum.

Just: Done with fish.

The first time I watched that scene, I got uncomfortable because I realized I was watching my own legal career.

Mine went something like this:

Dead bodies (forensic science background). Patents. Litigation. Finance. M&A. Software. Consumer products. AI. Chief Legal Office CEO.

Which sounds less like a résumé and more like someone trying to evade a subpoena.

But there actually was a pattern.

Every few years, I became completely obsessed with learning something new. I’d dive all the way in. I mapped the industry. Learned the business model. Traced the risk. Understood the operations, the personalities, the pressure points.

Then eventually, without warning, I’d wake up and think:

Okay. I think I’m done with fish.

“So… What’s else are you good at?”

The first time this happened was early in my career.

I came into law school with a science background, which meant people immediately pushed me toward patent law.

“You’ll always have a job.”

That was the pitch.

And to be fair, it was rational advice. Stable. Prestigious. Difficult. The kind of career path people say approvingly at dinner parties.

So, I passed the patent bar and joined a law firm.

Six months later, a partner looked at me and said:

“So… what else are you good at?”

Now, if you’ve never worked in a law firm, that may sound like a normal question.

It is not.

That is law-firm code for: “You appear spiritually deceased.”

Accurate.

I wasn’t a bad lawyer. I was just profoundly uninterested.

I could physically feel my brain shutting down while doing the work.

That experience taught me something important very early: Boredom is information.

Boredom Is Information

Not every hard thing means you should quit.

Sometimes work is just difficult because you are learning. Sometimes discipline matters more than excitement. Sometimes you simply need to push through.

But there is a specific kind of sustained boredom that feels different.

It feels like your curiosity leaving the building.

And if you ignore that feeling long enough, eventually your work starts reflecting it.

That’s what happened to me.

So, I moved into litigation.

Suddenly everything became strategic, human, and unpredictable. There were stories. Stakes. Big personalities. Weird facts. Problems nobody could cleanly untangle.

I loved it.

Until, somewhere around the third year of depositions that all started to feel the same -

done with fish.

Then finance. Then technology. Then startups. Then in-house legal work. Then AI. Each transition had its own version of the same story, a different industry, the same cycle.

Same cycle every time.

Obsess. Learn. Build. Grow. Repeat.

The Problem with Traditional Legal Career Narratives

For years, I thought this meant something was wrong with me.

Lawyers are supposed to specialize.

The profession practically worships linearity: Pick a lane. Become known for it. Stay there forever.

Meanwhile, my career path looked like someone changing television channels every three years.

I worried I looked unfocused.

But eventually I started noticing something interesting:

Every career move that looked disconnected from the outside built on the previous one.

Litigation taught me how people behave under pressure. Finance taught me how businesses make decisions. Technology taught me how products get built. In-house legal work taught me how companies operate in real life instead of inside legal theory.

Over time, the zigzag became the advantage.

The Accidental Advantage of Being a Multi-Pod

Eventually I came across a term, coined by career writer Emilie Wapnick, whose TED Talk on the subject is worth an hour of your time, for people like this:

Multipotentialite.

Or, as I prefer to call it: Multi-Pod.

People wired for multiple deep interests instead of one lifelong specialization.

The second I heard that term, my entire career suddenly made sense.

Because Multi-Pods are not flaky.

We are pattern collectors.

We build connective tissue between industries that normally do not talk to each other.

The former litigator spots operational risk differently, they see the deposition transcript hiding inside the contract clause. The finance person negotiates differently, reading an indemnity the way a CFO does, not just as a lawyer. The technology lawyer asks different product questions. The in-house lawyer sees exactly where legal advice breaks down once it meets actual operations.

At some point, the randomness becomes perspective.

Modern Companies Need Multi-Pods

Modern business increasingly rewards this kind of brain. Especially now.

AI alone is collapsing traditional silos everywhere.

Legal departments suddenly need to understand security architecture, procurement workflows, data governance, vendor management, product development, and technical infrastructure conversations that barely existed a decade ago.

Half the time, the legal issue is not even really the legal issue.

It’s a workflow issue. Or a communication issue. Or a product issue. Or a “nobody has thought through how this actually works in practice” issue.

The people who adapt fast are the people who are comfortable learning entirely new worlds over and over again.

That’s the hidden advantage of being a Multi-Pod. You stop fearing reinvention because you’ve survived it before. And you trust your ability to learn.

And once you trust that career pivots stop feeling like identity crises and start feeling more like intellectual migration patterns.

Done With Fish

So now, when I feel that familiar restlessness creeping in, I don’t panic the way I used to. I pay attention.

Because every major period of growth in my career started with the same feeling:

A quiet little voice saying, “Okay. I think we’re done with fish.”

First, it was patent law. Then litigation. Then M&A.

Then traditional ideas about what an in-house lawyer was supposed to be.

And eventually, it became something even bigger:

Traditional law firm and legal department structures themselves.

The older I get, the more I realize that many legal careers are built around inherited assumptions nobody ever stops to question:

That lawyers must work in offices.

That career paths must be linear.

That specialization must become permanent.

That success means staying in the same lane for thirty years.

That flexibility somehow means less ambition.

But some of the best legal work I’ve ever seen has come from people who stepped outside those assumptions entirely.

People building modern Chief Legal Offices instead of traditional legal departments.

People working virtually while raising families.

People moving between business, operations, technology, investigations, privacy, AI, and strategy without apologizing for it.

People creating careers that fit the way they think and live.

That path may not look traditional on paper. Good. Neither does the future of legal work.