It is Monday morning. Forty days.
I have been telling myself since Thursday that I would send the Marcus email. I said the same thing Friday. Saturday I said something to myself about meaning it differently this time, which was, if I’m being honest, stalling dressed as intention.
I sent it this morning at 8:22.
Here is what changed, or what I think changed.
I was not trying to write an email. I made coffee, walked the dog, came back to my desk without a plan. The calendar was empty. Not unusual, I have had two weeks of Mondays like this since the transition ended. But this morning felt different. Cleaner, maybe. Less like a morning I was supposed to be using for something.
The draft was still open from Sunday. I read the three versions I had written and closed without saving. I think I finally understood why none of them worked.
I had been trying to introduce myself.
Marcus and I talked for about twenty-five minutes at a conference in 2019. We were not talking about our jobs. We were talking about an idea: the difference between client success metrics and actual client success, how most B2B accounts are managed to the number that gets reported upstairs rather than the thing that determines whether the client stays. I had been thinking about this for years. He had, too. We did not need a shared institution for that conversation. We just needed to both have had the thought.
I spent three days trying to write an institutional introduction. Full provenance: here is how I know Elena, here is what I did, here is the context that should make you comfortable saying yes to a call. The version that situates me inside a frame the other person can check.
The conversation we actually had was not about a frame. It was about a problem.
I wrote one sentence. “We talked at the conference in 2019 about the gap between the metric and the renewal. I’ve been building a practice around exactly that, and I think there’s a conversation worth having.”
Reread it twice. Sent it.
I added a fourth entry to the contact log. Date, name, note. No follow-up date yet. I’ll set one once I know more, which I won’t know unless he responds, which he may not. That is fine. Not me convincing myself: actually fine.
Seventeen emails now. The sixteenth and seventeenth were harder than the rest, which is not how I expected learning to go. I keep waiting to get better at the hard part instead of just more practiced at moving through it. Those are not the same thing, and I am still working out whether the difference matters.
The October 14 reminder is nine days out. I set it at the beginning of October when I built the contact log. I still have not written what I will say to myself when it fires. I have been thinking about it on the dog walk every morning this week and have nothing yet.
Something honest. Not “you’ve done enough.” Not “you need to do more.” Some version of where I actually am.
Nine days to figure that out. The email is sent. That is today’s one thing.