First Clients 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 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 Names I've Been Keeping in My Head

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The attorney’s office acknowledged my intake form Tuesday afternoon. Two business days to schedule a consultation. It is Wednesday. I have been thinking about what I need to have ready.

The agreement, obviously. I’m going to scan it properly before I go in, not photograph it the way I photographed every school permission slip during the pandemic years, crooked, with my thumb in the corner. The clause is on page three. I’ll have it flagged. I am, it turns out, the person who shows up to legal consultations with a labeled document and a written list of questions. I suspected this about myself.