In which Our Hero tries really hard to do hard things.
I walked with a new person today.
Enjoyed diving into his head.
Sometimes I do this. Ask what he’s paying attention to, then follow where his mind wanders.
It started as a potential business conversation. But as business conversations sometimes go, that felt too high-stress. So we said “let’s not talk about that…” and talked about what was fun.
And what was fun, inevitably, circled back to the business at hand.
I wonder whether we’ll move forward together.
I wonder if the overlap between his interest and my curiosity will take us where I thought it would.
At the end of the conversation, I excused myself to the bathroom and dry-heaved over the toilet.
Life has been stressful of late.
Big moves.
Frightening moves.
Exhausting and intense and overwhelming moves.
–
We’ve decided to narrow scope.
The good: When I increased scope, the contractor offered me discounts for a few items. That means I know his marginal cost on them. Now, when we decrease scope, I’ll get those at a discount. This could sum to a few thousand dollars.
The bad: this experience is terrifically unenjoyable. Combing through all the proposals to locate how specific prices ballooned, and therefore
The ¿ugly?: We’ll probably end up writing the scope sheet for the contractor instead of the other way around. While this will probably arrive at a satisfying conclusion, it is an incredibly stressful and annoying process.
Julian Wise 