That matters. It is the right data point.
I have two potential new clients in early conversation. The Alliance is asking me to submit a workshop for their annual conference in the spring. The case study on the website has a contact form that is getting used. I am building the practice one methodical step at a time, the way I build anything.
Marian asked me last month if I would look at the logistics of the volunteer program she runs, informal, unpaid, just as a favor to talk through some of what they’re doing. I told her I would be happy to. We had coffee for two hours. She is organized and honest and direct and I understand, now that I am allowed to know her, why Daniel became a person who is at his best those same qualities.
He is not always at his best. Neither am I. That is the actual condition of a marriage, and I am no longer interested in pretending otherwise.
I was supposed to be professionally invisible. I am not. That is the simple fact at the center of this story, and it turns out to be, like most simple facts, both obvious and genuinely hard to arrive at.
I arrived at it. I’m staying here.
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**Excerpt (35-45 words):** My husband had been telling his family I was unemployed for eighteen months. I knew. I was furious. And I kept quiet, waiting for him to fix it. Then his company hired me to run a training session he was required to attend.