In thirty days I said yes to exactly one thing, and it took four days and a nudge. The rest of the month I was asking. I asked a stranger to hire me as a guitar teacher, asked the same advertiser for the third time to let me do medical billing, and asked card issuers to let me borrow. Asking came easily. Answering was where I kept falling down.
I WILL BE THERE
Mid-month, on a weekday morning, the organiser of the evening study programme wrote to his whole roster. Since spring he'd been asking me whether I had friends who could teach. This time I was on the list: "We are getting ready for an amazing year at [the school], and very much looking forward to having you on board for [the evening programme]."
Orientation was a Sunday at 7:30 in the evening. The boys would arrive that Tuesday, and the first session was the night after. He laid the evening out: "7:30-8:45pm will be [evening study] / 8:45-9:00pm will be [evening prayers] / 9:00-9:30pm- will be option learning". At the bottom: "Please confirm".
One of the other teachers confirmed the same day with one word: "Confirmed". I didn't. Two days later, at 5:29 in the afternoon, he wrote to me alone: "Hi [me], Hope all is well. Just want to make sure you saw this email and you are coming to the orientation."
Two days after that, on a Sunday at 9:35 at night, I answered: "I will be there! See you then"
So it took four days, one personal follow-up and an exclamation mark to make it sound like I'd been eager all along. Earlier in the year he had chased me more than once without hearing back. From what the records show, I answered once the email had only my name at the top.
On the second of September he sent the orientation reminder and then a second note: "We had a few people back out, so if you know of anyone else that would be interested. Please let me know ASAP!" Nothing shows me sending anyone. On the sixth: "[Evening study] Begins tonight." No email anywhere says what the job paid. Nor do the records say whether I was at orientation, only that I'd said I would be.
The same week, two days after the roster email, a mother wrote back from the start of the summer. In June I'd offered her son free flag football on Wednesdays from five to seven. Her reply: "I completely missed your response. It got buried somewhere. Are you still playing?"
She was the one apologising for a late reply. I never sent one, at least not inside the month. Seventeen days later I described myself in a cover letter as a football coach in my town. The one parent who asked whether the team still existed got nothing back.
ONE PAYSLIP, NO LESSONS
On the tenth at 2:01 in the afternoon an email came from the regional network of community centres that ran the pool in the village I'd moved away from. Translated: "Dear employee, from this month payslips will be sent by email." The attachment was an encrypted payslip for July. The pool's calendar had been dropping bookings onto mine for weeks, and this was the first record that called me an employee. I can't open the file, so I don't know the amount.
The bookings kept coming until the twenty-fourth. A seminary with 110 boys had been listed at 2,760. On the morning of the swim the title changed to 2,500. Fifty boys from the city were 1,800. A hundred girls came with a different lifeguard. One booking was titled "40 men, not closed". Six days later "not closed" was gone and the lifeguard's name was in. A seminary from the south brought forty boys for 1,500. That's about 25 a head for the big group before the cut, 23 after, and 37.50 for the small one. The records don't say who knocked 260 off on the day or why. The biggest group got the discount, at the last minute.
The guitar side made nothing. The payment account's monthly summaries for July and August showed nothing coming in, which made it five months running. On a Sunday night a relative forwarded me the town mailing-list digest with two words: "Num 7". Item seven was a man "Looking for recommendations for a male guitar teacher and a female piano teacher who give lessons to adults." At 8:48 the next morning I wrote to him:
"Hi I am responding to a post in [the town list]. My name is [me] and I am an experienced guitar teacher. I studied at [a music school] and I am proficient in many styles of music. My nunmber is [number], feel free to call or whatsapp anytime for any questions! [me]"
He'd asked for recommendations. I recommended myself, with a typo in the one line he needed. No reply, then or later.
The same day I put an ad on a classifieds site, for what the records don't say. Five days later the site reported five viewers. After ten days it was eight, and they offered me a paid upgrade.
On the sixth the freelance site I'd signed up to and never used closed the loop for me: "We noticed you haven't been working through [the site] lately... we've changed your profile to "private" until you're ready to start taking on new projects."
DECLINED IN THIRTY-NINE SECONDS
On the ninth, at 11:37 in the morning, the college's programme coordinator wrote: "Hi how are you. I just wanted to check in and see how the studying for the [entrance exam] is going?" I didn't answer.
Less than an hour later the college's system sent another email. Roughly translated: because of a computer glitch you may have received a message about a preparation and acceptance day. "Note: you are in waiting status until data intake is complete." If you got that message, it's cancelled. On the fourteenth, the seventeenth and the third of September the reminders came again, asking me to urgently upload the required documents.
On the fourth of September, at 1:40 in the afternoon, the programme secretary wrote to the whole English-language cohort: "classes will start on Oct. 17th in the afternoon." Then: "Those of you who got your Acceptance letters can register on-line to the dorms and pay the down payment for tuition (2,200)". And: "If you haven't been accepted yet, you should be getting an official notice soon. If you haven't sent in all your documents, please do so ASAP". Going by the records, both of those lines were about me.
The afternoon before, a Sunday at 4:33, three emails from one card issuer landed within thirty-nine seconds: "the decision to decline your recent application." The three used two different spellings of my own first name and went to two different email addresses. It looks as though I'd applied more than once. The reason was in a letter behind a login, and that letter isn't in the mailbox.
That wasn't the only one. A student card had been emailing that my application was "nearly done" and needed one more thing: "SCHOOL ENROLLMENT". A secured card sent two reminders with the subject "No credit check – complete your [card] application". On the sixth the first issuer wrote again, "we need to finish up your ... credit card application", which looks like one more. That's several applications in five days. My only income record was a payslip I couldn't open, and my degree hadn't started. The card that didn't need a credit check was the one I left unfinished.
A QUIT HOME OFFICE
The fourth of September was also an application morning. At 10:09 I emailed my CV to myself. At 10:31 I last edited an untitled document. At 10:32 I sent myself an empty email, and at 10:35 the document went out as a Word file. At 10:38 an outsourcing firm sent an automatic "Thanks for your application! We regret that we cannot respond to all submissions". At 10:40 I emailed an address with the subject "Medical": "Attached is cover letter and resume".
I'd applied for medical billing at that address in January and again in February. Nobody had replied either time. This was the third.
The cover letter:
"I am responding to an ad I saw on [an English-language classifieds site] concerning a position in medical billing prep and documentation management. My name is [me], I am currently a student at [the college] studying business and a football coach in [my town]."
"I am an excellent communicator, very self motivated, efficient and detail oriented."
"I have a state of the art computer as well as a quit home office available to me. I can work approximately 25 hours a week and possibly more."
It claimed I was detail oriented, and it offered a "quit" home office. The saved version ends there, with no closing line and no signature. The "student" had classes six weeks away and documents still missing. The "football coach" hadn't answered the one parent who asked. All of it was technically defensible. None of it would have survived a phone call.
WHAT I TOOK FROM THAT MONTH
A nudge isn't a yes. The only commitment I made that month came after a personal reminder, and the exclamation mark doesn't change that.
Answer the people who come back. A mother apologised to me for replying late, and I never replied at all.
Sending the same application to the same silent address a third time is a data point, not persistence. Three tries and no reply means it's time to change the approach or the target.
Lenders read the same file you do. Mine was one payslip I couldn't open, no lesson income and a degree that hadn't begun. Three decline emails in thirty-nine seconds was an honest answer. These days, when a small business asks me about money, the first thing I look for is what's actually coming in, before the story about what's coming next.
Proofread the sentence about your workspace. Nobody hires a quit home office.
