I keep written notes because I genuinely cannot remember who anybody is
- Looking for
- one conversation worth keeping instead of nine to manage
- Experience
- Fifteen years, four arrangements, two of them several years long.
- Around
- South Beach, Miami
There is a notebook on my desk with a page for each person I am talking to. Name they use, what they do, where they are, what they said they wanted, when they said they were leaving. It started as a joke and became necessary, because between two apps and a pool that turns over every few months I was genuinely mixing people up and being caught doing it. Nothing has ever made me feel worse about how I was using these things.
Forty six, switch, I fit out shopfronts, South Beach, fifteen years in this with four arrangements behind me, two of them long enough to count properly.
I have since cut it down to one app and two or three conversations at a time, which is why this post is on a board instead. I would rather write one long thing to whoever it suits than nine short ones to people I am keeping straight with stationery.
What I want is a single ongoing arrangement, both directions, established slowly. I am good at planning and I am good at being organised for somebody else. I do not want anything that requires me to be exciting. And I would rather not talk to anybody who is currently managing nine conversations, because I know exactly what that looks like from the inside.