The number this morning is fifty.
Not fifty as in halfway to something. I don’t know what the something would be, or where halfway falls on the line I’m walking. Just fifty, a count of mornings I’ve sat down and written something here instead of not writing it.
I thought I’d be further along by now. Not in a self-critical way, more the way you think you’ll be somewhere by dinner and then dinner comes and you’re still on the highway. I had a vague sense that fifty days in would feel more decided, more settled, like the fog would have burned off by now.
What I have instead: two outreach emails in the world, neither producing a scheduled call yet. A job where I keep noticing things I can no longer not notice. A blog that turned into something I didn’t plan for it to be.
The fog hasn’t burned off. I’m navigating it differently. I’m not sure those are the same thing.
I sent the follow-up this morning.
Eight words. Checked in, said I was still interested in connecting. Twenty seconds to type, sent before I opened anything else in my inbox.
I had been sitting on it for a week. Not for any strategic reason. I was waiting for a moment when I felt more certain, which is a thing I keep doing even though I know by now that certainty is not an accumulating substance. It doesn’t build up between Monday and Tuesday until you have enough. It doesn’t work that way. I know this. I was still doing it.
What I also know: the longer I didn’t send it, the larger it became. By this morning it had turned into a Thing I Was Avoiding, which is a category that compounds. So I sent it before my brain could schedule another deferral. Eight words. Done.
I’m at my desk. It’s Monday in June. Same chair I was in fifty days ago, and also not the same at all.
The chair hasn’t changed. The job, officially, hasn’t changed. I’m still Senior Director of Strategic Accounts at a company I’m going to leave in approximately five months, if what I’ve set in motion actually moves. A calendar invite arrived this morning for a planning cycle meeting I would have cared about a year ago. I accepted it. I’ll go. I’ll contribute. The people in that room have nothing to do with the question I’m trying to answer, and they still need someone managing those accounts, and that person is still me until it isn’t.
But I notice the seam more clearly now. There’s the Leigh who walks into that meeting, and there’s the Leigh who is tracking something else entirely. I’ve been moving between those two versions for a while. Fifty days in, I’m more aware of where they don’t line up.
What I thought fifty days would look like: less seam. More resolution. Some version of clarity with a delivery date I had simply failed to notice.
What fifty days actually looks like: I know things I didn’t know in April. I know that telling Doug was right and that I waited too long to do it. I know that an attorney consultation sounds like a locked door until it happens, and then it sounds like a regular Tuesday. I know that thirty words from someone who doesn’t owe me anything counts as evidence, even if I keep asking what exactly it’s evidence of.
I know I can write fifty posts. I did not know that in April.
What I don’t know: whether the first call, when it finally happens, will go the way I need it to. What Zoe is watching from across the dinner table. Whether my mother suspects something.
What I’m trying to stop pretending: that I’ll feel ready before I go. I think I’m going to leave uncertain. Schedule the first call uncertain. I’m starting to think that might be the actual structure of this, not a flaw in my preparation. It’s not a comfortable thing to sit with. I’m sitting with it anyway.
Eight words this morning. Still no answer. That might be enough for a Monday.