The Email I Rewrote Eleven Times
I counted the drafts folder before I finally hit send last night. Eleven versions of the same four paragraphs to a client who was only asking me to confirm a delivery date, something I could have answered in one sentence at nine in the morning. Instead I rewrote the opening line four separate times, deleted an exclamation point and put it back twice, and read the whole thing out loud in an empty kitchen to make sure no sentence could possibly be misread as careless. By the time I sent it, it was almost midnight, and the actual content had not changed since draft two. I used to think this kind of obsessing was just thoroughness, the good kind of care a responsible man brings to his work. Some of it is. But if I am honest with myself, most of what kept me circling that email for three hours was not a desire to serve my client well. It was fear, dressed up in a collared shirt and calling itself diligence. Fear that one clumsy sentence would confirm what some part of me still believes ...