What I didn't expect to learn about myself

Father’s Day weekend and Jake is out doing his thing, so I have the apartment to myself for a few hours. I made coffee, rolled out my mat, did about twenty minutes of movement, and then just… sat down here with my notebook. There’s been something I’ve been meaning to actually write out, not just think in circles about, and this felt like the morning for it.

What I didn’t expect to learn about myself

It’s about the situation with Alex. Not rehashing the whole thing, I already did that in my head approximately four hundred times, but what it actually taught me. The confrontation itself was uncomfortable in that way where your voice stays steady but your hands want to shake. What I didn’t expect was that the harder lesson wasn’t about Alex at all. It was about me noticing how long I’d let things slide because I didn’t want to make things awkward. I’m good at reading a room. Turns out I’m also really good at using that skill to avoid the necessary conversation. Those are not the same thing, and I’d been treating them like they were.

the notebook doesn’t judge

Leadership in the kind of work I do, coordinating cultural programs, managing workshop dynamics, being someone people look to in group settings, it asks you to hold two things at once: warmth and clarity. I think I leaned so hard into warmth that I let clarity slip. The boundary conversation with Alex was uncomfortable precisely because I’d waited too long, and waiting too long made it bigger than it needed to be. That’s the part that stays with me. The lesson isn’t just ‘speak up.’ It’s ‘speak up before it calcifies.’ I’m writing that down so I actually remember it the next time I feel myself deciding to wait one more week.

Quiet mornings like this are good for that. No agenda, no workshop prep, no archive boxes on the table. Just the notebook and whatever actually needs to be said.