These are not regrets in the sense of losses I can’t recover from. They are lessons in the difference between the arrangement you assume and the arrangement you negotiate, and in how long you can operate on assumption before the assumption fails.
I am operating now on negotiation. Written, compensated, bounded, and specific.
Owen and I had a disagreement in my second month about a protocol proposal I’d put forward. He thought the implementation timeline was too aggressive. I thought the slower timeline created an unnecessary gap. We had the conversation directly, with reasons on both sides, and modified the approach. The modification was better than either original position.
I noted this. I note it because it is the thing I had wanted and not fully had for eighteen years: a professional relationship where the disagreement is a conversation rather than an assumption that someone will smooth it over.
The work now is hard in the ordinary ways that good work is hard. There is more to build than there is time to build it perfectly. There are coordinators who are developing and who require investment I give gladly because that is the job of a senior person in an operations team. There are clients who have requirements and carriers who have constraints and the space between these two things is where the job lives.
I live in that space. I have always lived in that space.
The difference is that now the space is mine.
A Note on What I Know Now