The scheduling email came at 8:47 this morning. I was on my second cup of coffee and my third work email of the day when I saw it, and I did the thing where I close the laptop and then open it again because I wasn’t sure I’d read it right.
The consultation is Tuesday at 1pm. Video call, forty-five minutes, bring your employment agreement.
I have known this was coming. I submitted the intake form six days ago. I knew a date would arrive and I would put it in my calendar. And yet when it came, I sat there with my coffee going cold and felt something I am still trying to name correctly. Not relief, exactly. More like: oh. So it’s real.
I put the appointment in my calendar. Then I refreshed my inbox three times by reflex before I remembered I was not waiting for anything anymore. I had gotten the thing I was waiting for.
Now I have to think about what “bring your employment agreement” actually requires of me.
I have the agreement. I have the clause flagged on page three. I have the question about the missing exhibit written on a Post-it on the corner of my desk at home. That part I can handle.
What I’m less certain about is the conversation itself. An employment attorney working this kind of case is not going to spend forty-five minutes reading my agreement out loud. They’re going to read what I sent in the intake form and then ask questions. The questions will be about what I’m planning to do and who I’m planning to do it with.
I need to be able to answer that with some specificity.
Last Wednesday I wrote six names in my phone. First and last, company, how I know them, when we last spoke. I was careful about it. What I did not write was what I’d actually say to any of them, or what specifically I’d be asking for. I wrote names as if making the list was the same as knowing what to do with it.
Tuesday I will need more than a list.
The attorney is going to ask: have you had any preliminary conversations about potential clients? The answer right now is no, not about this, not yet. I’m going to have to say that in a room where someone is charging me for their time. I want to know whether “no” means I’ve been appropriately careful or just slow. I genuinely don’t know which one is true.
There is one name on the list where the answer could be different before Tuesday. The former colleague who has been asking since December 2022 whether I’ve thought about going independent. No legal barrier. No gap to explain. I know what the email should say. I’ve had the shape of it for a while, longer than I’ll admit in one sentence.
I wrote about her yesterday. I knew when I wrote it that writing about why I hadn’t sent it was not the same as sending it. I just didn’t know what to do with that gap yet.
I keep catching myself calculating: if I send the email today, she might respond by Monday. Then I’d have something real to tell the attorney, instead of six names in my phone and a lot of intention. Which is, I notice, a way of using the attorney consultation as the reason to finally do something I should have done in January. Taking a future event and wrapping it around a present action I’ve been avoiding. I do this. It is not my best quality.
The appointment is Tuesday at 1pm. That is not a self-imposed deadline. It is an actual one. I have come to understand those are different things. I set a lot of self-imposed deadlines. I am very creative about moving them.
I don’t know if I’m going to send the email this weekend. I should. The case for it is not complicated. The obstacle is not legal, not practical, and not really about her. It’s about showing up as the person who means it, after four years of being the person who might.
I’m going to walk the dog. I’ll decide when I get back.