The backward map I built in May said first client conversations needed to happen in July. I wrote that because the math required it. Notice in September means I need something lined up before then, which means a conversation has to happen, which means the outreach had to have worked, which means July was the month. The logic held up every time I tested it. It still does.
Today is July 1. I checked the inbox at 7:08.
Three things: an internal digest, a calendar reminder for Thursday’s standup, a newsletter I have been meaning to unsubscribe from for eighteen months and somehow cannot stop reading. Nothing from either of the two people I emailed.
First follow-up: sixteen days without a response. Second: eight.
In May, “July” was a target I was pointing at from five weeks away, which is far enough that a month is still a concept instead of a calendar. I was building the map, not living inside it. There is a difference. I knew that then. I just did not expect the difference to feel quite this specific when I arrived.
The plan is still the plan. The math still holds. July has thirty days left. There is no version of this where sixteen days of silence means anything more than sixteen days, especially at the end of Q2 for someone with my first contact’s title. I know that. I have also checked the inbox twice this morning and found the same three things both times.
I am not panicking. I was, for maybe four minutes when I looked at the spreadsheet and then looked at the date side by side. Then I thought about what Q2 close looks like from inside a VP role, and the four minutes passed. Mostly.
One thing I had not mapped: the waiting is also July. I planned for conversations in July. I did not separately name the part where July begins and the conversations have not started yet. They are the same month. The first conversation, if it comes, will be in July. So will this Tuesday morning, this inbox, this newsletter, and sixteen days of quiet from someone whose calendar I cannot see.
I opened the unnamed document after. Eight stories. I left them as they were. Closed the laptop at 7:41 and made coffee.
July 1 is also the start of H2 at the company. There is a meeting this afternoon, on my work calendar rather than my real one, about pipeline for the back half of the year. Someone will share a slide with a funnel on it. I will have an opinion about the funnel. I will share the opinion, because I am still here and I plan to keep doing my job until the day I do not.
The two calendars continue to coexist. This Tuesday is on both of them.
I have been pointing at July for six weeks. I built it into the map as the month when things would need to start moving. Now it is here, and it is a Tuesday morning and an inbox with three things in it and thirty days I still have not used.
It is only July 1. I keep having to remind myself of that, which is probably its own data point about how long I have been waiting.