My manager and I have a biweekly one-on-one. Thirty minutes, Tuesdays at 2pm. We have had somewhere between fifty and sixty of these since he took the role two years ago. I stopped counting the number several months ago, which I think is its own data point, but I will not belabor it.
Today’s ran twenty-six minutes. He asked how two accounts were tracking. I gave the version I give him: one in good shape, one I am watching. He said keep him posted on the one I was watching. At the end he said he would resend the August 11 invite. I said sure.
Then I accepted it.
I will not be at that meeting. Not if things go the way I am planning. My notice date is September 19, which is after August 11, but the point is not the date math. The point is that the August 11 meeting exists on my official calendar and does not exist on my real calendar, and I have two calendars now, and I am not sure exactly when that became the case.
I want to be careful about what I am saying here. Not that I lied, because I did not. I am still employed. Everything I reported on those two accounts today was accurate. My plans are my plans and my employment is my employment and they can coexist for four more months without resolving. I said this to myself in May when I accepted the November executive summary deliverable, and when I sat through the planning cycle meeting, and I was not wrong then.
But this was the third time I agreed to a future I am not planning to inhabit. The first time, you notice it. The second time, you remind yourself it is fine. The third time, you start to wonder if “fine” is the right frame, or if it is the word you use when you need the frame to hold for a few more months.
I have not answered that yet. I am leaving it as a question and moving on.
I checked the inbox at 9:40. Not 7:08. I was on a different call at 7:08 and forgot. The 7:08 habit is apparently less durable than I thought it was.
First follow-up: fifteen days without a response. Second: seven.
I have been telling myself that fifteen days means nothing, that people are in all-hands season or end of quarter or traveling for something I do not know about. This is probably true of at least one of the two. The part I cannot stop sitting with is not knowing which.
Late Monday night, after everyone was asleep, the unnamed document grew again. I sat down to close some browser tabs and instead wrote three paragraphs about a client call from 2020. A call I have thought about almost every year since it happened and never described to anyone. I do not know if it belongs in the document. I know it is there now. Eight stories.
I keep not naming the document. I am aware of this. At some point that is going to have to change.
Thirty-seven weeks until November 14. An August 11 invite, green and confirmed, on the wrong calendar.
I keep telling myself the dissonance is manageable. It mostly is. I just did not picture, back when I was planning this, that “manageable” would feel like accepting a meeting invite I have no intention of keeping and saying sure when someone tells me they will resend it.
I said sure. I kept him posted. I am a very good employee, and I am leaving as soon as it is time to leave.