The walk was forty minutes. I’ve done that route a hundred times: down to the park, around the pond, back up the hill. The dog ran ahead and waited. I was not thinking about the dog.
When I got home I opened the laptop before I sat down. I have learned not to give myself the option of sitting down first.
I typed her name in the To field. The woman who has been emailing me every December for four years asking whether I’ve thought about going independent. She left corporate six years ago, built her own practice, then went in-house at a portfolio company. She is a former colleague, not a client of my current employer. That distinction matters, and I’ll come back to it.
I wrote the email.
What I produced was approximately six sentences. Four years of mental drafting, six sentences of actual typing. I told her I was moving forward. I named the shape of it: the consulting direction I’ve been circling, a legal review next week, July as the target for first conversations, November as the exit date. I said I wanted her to know before anything was finalized. I did not ask her for anything yet. Then I hit send.
Then I refreshed my inbox three times by reflex. Then I made a grilled cheese.
I want to say it felt like a release. Four years is a long time to carry something in your head. I thought hitting send would feel like setting something down. It didn’t, quite. It felt more like: oh. Okay. That happened.
The world did not reorganize around me. I ate the grilled cheese. I thought about Tuesday. The email exists in the world now, which is a fact that was not true on Thursday, and that is not nothing.
I’m trying not to be dismissive about the six sentences, either. That framing sounds a little harsh and I don’t mean it to be. The drafts weren’t wasted. I had to know what I was going to say before I could say it, and four years of thinking meant I knew exactly what to type when I finally typed it. Six sentences is what the real thing requires. I think that’s true. I’m mostly sure that’s true.
She hasn’t responded. That is not a problem because I sent it yesterday afternoon and she is a person with a full life on a Friday. I also happen to know that she has responded to every single December email within twenty-four hours, which is information I apparently memorized without deciding to. I am monitoring an inbox that has given me no reason to worry.
Here is the thing nagging at me, because I should say it.
The attorney on Tuesday is going to ask whether I have had any preliminary conversations about potential clients. Three days ago, the answer was no. Now the answer is something. I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. She is a former colleague, not a current or former client of my employer. Nothing in my employment agreement, from what I understand of it, restricts contact with former colleagues who went in-house somewhere else entirely.
But I sent that email four days before the consultation. I notice I am slightly less settled about Tuesday than I was Thursday. That’s new. I’m going to put it in the folder with the other things I haven’t worked out yet. The folder is getting heavy.
What I know this morning: one email sent, one response outstanding, one attorney meeting in four days, five more names in my phone I have not called. A date in November that I have said out loud exactly once.
The six sentences are in her inbox. She has read them, or she will. That part is done.
I don’t know what she’ll say. I don’t know what the attorney will make of the timing. I don’t know if what I felt after hitting send was anti-climax or just proportionate response to a proportionate action. I’m working on not needing to decide which one before she writes back.