Five years, several hundred conversations, and I started every single one
- Looking for
- somebody who will do the opening once, just to see how it feels
- Experience
- Five years, two dynamics, both of which I began.
- Around
- the commuter belt, London
Not once. Five years, two real arrangements, a great many conversations, and every one of them started because I wrote first. I am not owed an opening message and I am not asking anybody to feel guilty. I am reporting a number, because this board argues constantly about who does the work and I have a clean data set of my own.
Forty one, the commuter belt, switch, five years in, two arrangements both of which I started.
What it has produced, oddly, is competence. I am good at opening messages now and I no longer find it frightening. What it has also produced is a low background sense of being tolerated rather than wanted, which took me about four years to identify and which is not fair on any of the people involved.
So: I would like, once, to be the one who is written to. And after that, an arrangement with structure and a weekly shape to it, in either direction, ongoing rather than occasional.
Not looking for anybody who is waiting to be approached and calls it standards. Not looking for a person who will answer warmly for months and never once initiate anything. And not looking for reassurance about this, which several people have offered and none of it has helped.