I have had the name for more than two weeks.
She gave it at the end of the call. Not a warm introduction, not a full recommendation, just: there’s someone I’m thinking of, let me see if she makes sense. A few days later a short email arrived. The contact’s name, her title, a line that said renewal timing problem, might be worth a conversation. I read it twice the day it arrived. Then I did not email.
I want to be honest about what I was doing in those two weeks. I told myself I was letting the introduction settle. Not rushing, not coming in hot, giving the referral a chance to look me up if she was curious. That is a reasonable account of what I was doing. I’m not sure it is the true account.
Yesterday I opened the note and closed it without emailing. I wrote then that I could not tell if that was caution or avoidance. That was accurate. What I did not say is that I had done exactly that, opened and closed the note without emailing, at least four times over the preceding two weeks. Open the note, read it, decide I wasn’t quite ready, close it, find something else to do.
This morning I opened it again and sat with a question: what is the actual difference between caution and avoidance?
Caution is still moving. You are not ready, but you are doing something to get ready. The thinking is producing something, even if it is slow.
Avoidance calls itself caution. Nothing happens in the interim. You tell yourself you are being careful, and you are thinking, but the thinking never arrives anywhere. It just keeps you at the same distance from the email you have not written.
I have not done anything in two weeks that got me closer to ready. The email was open in a mental tab and I did not add a single word to it. That is the sign. When there is a specific next step and you are not taking it and you are not doing anything to prepare for it, you are not being cautious. You are waiting for an external reason to show up, and it will not show up, because external reasons are for jobs with other people’s calendars.
I wrote the email in eight minutes. Subject: the contact’s name mentioned you might be dealing with a renewal timing issue. Three sentences, first one led with her problem. Hit send at 8:47am.
I have been watching the trajectory. Three weeks to send the first outreach. Forty-five minutes for the second. Twenty minutes for the third. Eight minutes for the referral.
I don’t want to make too much of that. Competence is one explanation. Calibrated expectation of silence is another, and I’ll be honest that’s the version you reach for when you’re managing disappointment in advance. I think what’s actually happening is simpler: the email took eight minutes because eight minutes is what it required. When I stopped adding time for reasons that were mine rather than the email’s, there was not that much to write.
Three days until the first month ends. The fear-of-the-first-month post is still not written. Marcus has been quiet for five days. The document sentence is still not written.
I sent the referral email at 8:47 on a Friday morning. That is what I have for today. I will let you know what comes back.