I woke up this morning and checked Terri’s contact before I checked the time.
6:14 AM. The text field was still empty from last night. My thumb was hovering again. I put the phone facedown on the nightstand and went to make coffee.
Here’s what I’ve learned about myself this week: I can diagnose a $200K account save in fifteen minutes, but I cannot write a two-sentence text message to a woman I used to eat lunch with every Tuesday.
I drafted the message four times before noon. The first version was three paragraphs long. It included the phrase “exploring some professional options” and sounded like a cover letter addressed to someone I once split a hotel shuttle with at a conference. I deleted it. The second version was shorter but still had “pick your brain” in it, which I already told you I hate. The third version tried to be casual in a way that was transparently not casual. “Hey stranger! Long time!” Exclamation points are not my personality. Anyone who knows me would know that.
The fourth version is what I sent. Here it is, word for word:
“Hey Terri, it’s Leigh. I know it’s been a while. I’m thinking about going independent and I’d love to talk to someone who’s actually done it. Would you have 20 minutes sometime this week?”
Thirty-one words. It took me nineteen hours to write thirty-one words. That ratio is not great.
I sent it at 12:47 PM, sitting at my desk during a lunch break I was technically not taking because I had a 1:00 meeting I’d already decided I wasn’t going to pay attention to. I pressed send and then immediately put my phone in my desk drawer like it was evidence.
Here’s the thing about sending a text like that. It’s an irreversible action in a life I’ve built almost entirely around reversible ones. I can delete the spreadsheet. I can stop writing this blog. I can let the phone note rot for another year and no one would know. But Terri has the message now. She’s seen my name. She knows I used the word “independent,” which means something very specific to someone who left a salaried job to do what I’m considering doing.
I can’t walk it back with a “haha just kidding, everything’s fine here.” I mean, I could. But she’d know.
Doug was sitting six feet away when I sent it. We both work from home on Tuesdays. He was on a call about liability coverage for a commercial property, and I was pressing send on a text that might be the first real step toward leaving my career, and we were in the same room not talking about either thing. I’m not saying that’s a metaphor. It’s just what happened.
It’s 9 PM now and she hasn’t responded.
Which is fine. People don’t respond to texts from former colleagues immediately. Or sometimes at all. She might see my name and feel the mild obligation of reconnection and decide not today. She might be busy. She might have changed her number. She might read it and think, oh, Leigh, from that job I haven’t thought about in four years, and not know what to say.
I keep checking anyway. I’ve checked eleven times since 12:47. I know the number because I started counting after the fifth time, which means there were probably more than five before that. So let’s say fourteen. Let’s be honest about fourteen.
What I didn’t expect is how much harder this feels than writing the blog. Writing here, I can tell myself I’m just thinking out loud. Nobody has to respond. There’s no read receipt. But a text to a real person who knows my face and my voice and my actual work history, that’s not thinking out loud. That’s a request. I’m asking Terri to take twenty minutes of her week and spend them on my half-formed idea for a consulting service I haven’t tested on a single human being.
I keep telling myself the hard part was sending it. But I think the hard part might be whatever comes after she answers.
If she answers.