We Had a System

June twenty-seventh. The plan was solid. I want to be clear about that. We had a notebook. We had coffee. Simone had divided the material into sections with the kind of brisk efficiency that makes you think: yes, this is the person I want in my corner. I even found a pen.

At some point, I cannot tell you exactly when, because time stops working correctly in that break room, the notebook became a prop and the argument became the main event. Simone read a sentence from my notes aloud with the tone of someone presenting Exhibit A to a jury. I laughed hard enough that the pen rolled off the table. We did not retrieve it immediately.

the notebook as evidence, presented for the court

The thing is, we did eventually get through it. That's the part I keep leaving out whenever I tell this story, because it is less funny and also because it took a while. We sat there in the fluorescent-light reality of the break room, the corkboard, the coffee machine that takes three rounds of convincing, and we worked through it in the way you do when you've already burned your discipline on the argument portion of the evening and only good-natured stubbornness is left.

two hours in. zero pages finished. perfect.

I propped my phone up at some point to document the session. I had good intentions. What I got was three frames of us looking exactly like two people who have not studied as much as they planned. The timer does not lie. I've been thinking about the gear shop on the way home from climbing lately, passed it again on Tuesday and noticed the same window, but that's for another post. Tonight's subject is the notebook, the argument, and the forty collective minutes we spent on note organization strategy before writing a single word.