Avoidance on Own The Leap

Six Sentences After Four Years

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The walk was forty minutes. I’ve done that route a hundred times: down to the park, around the pond, back up the hill. The dog ran ahead and waited. I was not thinking about the dog.

When I got home I opened the laptop before I sat down. I have learned not to give myself the option of sitting down first.

I typed her name in the To field. The woman who has been emailing me every December for four years asking whether I’ve thought about going independent. She left corporate six years ago, built her own practice, then went in-house at a portfolio company. She is a former colleague, not a client of my current employer. That distinction matters, and I’ll come back to it.

The Real Deadline

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

The Email I Keep Not Sending

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have a draft folder problem. Not a technical one. I don’t have things sitting in my email drafts right now, taking up space, waiting. What I have is a mental draft folder, and that is worse, because nobody can see it and I can pretend it does not exist.

I wrote six names down on Wednesday. The list is in my phone. Every name has a company and a note about how I know them and when we last spoke. I was careful about it, which is something I do when I’m nervous.

The Intake Form

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The box is back in the closet. I put it away Sunday after I found what I was looking for, which is what I do with things I’ve dealt with and also things I haven’t. I’m aware those two states are not distinguishable from the outside.

I have the document. I know the clause. I know there’s a missing exhibit, something called “Restricted Clients,” that I either need to locate or find someone qualified to interpret without. I know exactly who can answer this: an employment attorney who represents employees. Not employers. The distinction matters and is not obvious from most law firm websites.

The Agreement I Signed in 2002

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Saturday morning. Doug was out getting the car washed. Zoe was asleep until a time I have stopped having opinions about. Max left at 7:15 for a lacrosse tournament I can track in only the broadest terms, and I found myself with a quiet house and no plausible excuse.

So I Googled it.

“Non-solicitation agreement standard terms.” Just typed it, hit enter, the way you finally pull a bandage you’ve been preparing to pull for two weeks.

The List I Won't Write Down

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Thursday, second coffee, before a call that will definitely run long. I had seven minutes and I did what I’ve been doing with every scrap of found time lately: I tried to start the list.

Not a list I can put anywhere yet. I’ve done the health insurance research, or, not exactly done, I have two spreadsheet tabs and a saved bookmark for a healthcare.gov calculator I haven’t run all the way through. But I know the shape of it now: COBRA would be $1,840 a month for our family, which is enough to take seriously. The ACA marketplace option, depending on what I project for year-one income, might come out close to $1,100. Neither number is what I had in my head before I looked, which was something between “impossible” and “paralyzing” with no actual figure attached. The real figures are manageable. Annoying, but manageable. I did not expect to feel that way about them.

The Productive Version of Hiding

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Saturday morning. Doug went to get the car washed, which takes him about ninety minutes because he also stops at the hardware store and the place that does the good breakfast sandwiches. I know this because I have been married to this man for twenty-one years and he has never once just gotten the car washed.

I had ninety minutes. Maybe two hours if there was a line.

I should have done a lot of things with that time. Sorted through the pile of college brochures on Zoe’s desk. Called my mother. Waited for Doug to come home and said the thing I spent all of yesterday writing about needing to say.