Tuesday.
First day of September. Twenty-four years of my nervous system knowing what September means, and this morning I got a Q4 planning thread in my inbox before 9am and read it the way you read a letter addressed to someone who used to live at your address.
The details were correct. Names I know. Timelines I’ve worked before. A request for preliminary account coverage inputs by the 12th. I added a calendar note for the 12th, out of what I can only describe as professional habit, and then sat there for a minute noticing that I had done that.
September 19 is nineteen days away. I won’t be presenting anything to anyone in Q4.
There’s an item I’ve been carrying since the attorney consultation in early June that I have not acted on. My employment agreement references a “Restricted Clients” exhibit. A list, which I’ve never seen, of accounts the non-solicitation clause specifically covers. The attorney flagged it in June: get the list. It will tell you exactly where your boundaries are in year one. Some names on my second list of twenty-three may be on it. Some may not.
She said it straightforwardly. You have a right to request it. It’s standard.
I have not requested it.
This isn’t, and let me be precise here, this isn’t about fear. I’m not afraid of what the list says. The attorney was clear that the clause is narrow, the exhibit exists to define scope, and knowing the scope is strictly useful. Whatever names are on it, I’ll work with the information.
What I’ve been doing, I think, is holding the request at arm’s length because making it is an administrative step that only makes sense if you’re actually leaving. Not planning to leave. Not thinking seriously about leaving. Actually doing it. You don’t request the Restricted Clients exhibit from HR to satisfy your curiosity. You request it because you have consulted an employment attorney and you’re going to need the information soon.
I know I’m leaving. I have a backward map, a spreadsheet, a date. I told Doug in May. I told my mother in July. I sat at dinner with Zoe in August and explained the whole thing. I have a second list with twenty-three names on it and a note on my desk that says “think about whether I know anyone.” I know I’m leaving.
And yet I have not made the request, and every time I’ve thought about it I’ve found something more pressing.
I filled out the Q4 planning thread this morning. Added three account observations, flagged one renewal risk, kept the tone appropriately forward-looking. The observations are real. The risk is real. I’ll make sure whoever takes the territory in October has what they need. That’s the deal I made with myself when I wrote the Q4 commitment in June, and I intend to keep it.
What I’m less sure about is why the exhibit request still hasn’t moved. I can construct good practical reasons: September 19 is nineteen days away; once I give notice, the process changes anyway; I’ll know the list before I need to act on it.
All of those are true. They’re also the exact shape that productive deferral takes.
Here’s what I think is actually happening: making that request, in a normal inbox, to HR, using my work email, makes me a person who is demonstrably planning to leave. And even though I know I’m planning to leave, there is something about creating a paper trail inside the institution that feels different from everything else I’ve done.
The spreadsheet is mine. The backward map is mine. The attorney I paid out of pocket and the twenty-three names I wrote in a personal note. This would be the first request I’ve made from inside the company that only makes sense if you’re already most of the way out.
I know how this ends. I’m going to request the exhibit this week, probably tomorrow, before I can find another reason. It will take three minutes. HR will send me a PDF. That will be that.
I’m just sitting with the fact that I’ve been finding reasons for eleven weeks. That seems like information about something, even if I can’t name exactly what.
September 1. Q4 planning thread added to. Nineteen days.
The exhibit is not going to request itself.