It is Thursday. Six days to October 14. Thirty-seven to the date that matters.
I sat down this morning with the intention of writing the October 14 reminder note. Fourth attempt. Made coffee first, which is normal. Opened a document, put the cursor below the header, waited for the feeling of knowing what to say.
What came out first was: the blog.
Not a sentence. Two words. I stopped and looked at them for a minute before I talked myself out of the thought.
Here is what I mean.
I have 158 posts. Each one is a date-stamped account of where I was on that day, what I was thinking about, what I was waiting for, what I couldn’t yet name. Some are better than others, some truer than others, but taken together they are a record I didn’t have a year ago. A person making a decision in real time. Not in retrospect. Before knowing how it ends.
The October 14 note was supposed to do that. Make space for something underneath the logistical layer. Check in. How are you.
I think I may have already been doing that. Every morning. In this document.
I want to be careful not to oversell the realization, because it felt a little too tidy and I noticed that. A person who has been avoiding writing two paragraphs for a week probably shouldn’t get credit for discovering she didn’t need to write them. That is just avoidance in a more expensive coat.
But here is the honest version.
The note I set on October 14 was supposed to catch me if I started talking myself into staying. The blog has been doing that, in a slower and less dramatic way than I imagined when I started. Not because anyone is holding me accountable, they aren’t, not really, but because I’ve written six days out, and thirty-seven days out, and the morning after every hard thing in between. The comfortable version is no longer available. There is nothing for the October 14 reminder to do that I have not already done by sitting down this morning and every morning before it.
Maybe that is what 158 posts are.
Last night Doug had a long work call after dinner. I was at the desk reading through older posts, Day 37, Day 40, some from late May when I was still explaining the logic to myself every other sentence. That person was still at work. Still four months from the notice. I read a few paragraphs and thought: she had no idea how it was going to go, and she wrote it down anyway, and that turned out to matter.
Doug walked through the room and asked what I was doing.
Reading, I said. What. The blog.
He didn’t say anything for a second and then said “and?” and I said “nothing, just checking in on myself,” which is almost true. He nodded and got a glass of water.
He still hasn’t asked the second question. I have been waiting for it for weeks. Last night I almost asked him what it was, and then didn’t. I’m not sure whether I stopped because the timing was wrong or because I don’t know what I would do with the answer.
The contact log has four entries. The Marcus field still has no follow-up date. I’ll send something October 12 or 13, which I know without looking it up. That kind of knowledge travels fine.
Six days to October 14. I might write the note anyway. Not because I need it now the way I thought I did. Just to see what the honest version actually looks like when the date is right there underneath it.