That month I told a stranger I was a student in business administration. I hadn't sat a single class.
I also asked the college where I could take the entrance exam in English, chased a meeting about my documents, and finally got one in a hotel lobby. The only real deal I negotiated in thirty days wasn't for a client, a team or a job. It was for thank-you cards. I told the printer: "Cheapest available is the best."
The outbox holds five threads for the whole month. Here's what's in them.
A COACH WHO DIDN'T TAKE INTERNS
On a Sunday evening early in the month I wrote to an executive coach, subject "Career Coaching":
"My name is [me] and I am a student in business administration. My goal is to become a career coach. I was wondering if it would be possible to intern with you a couple times a week or if you had any other ideas that could help me."
"I am a student." I'd paid a registration fee the month before. Classes hadn't started. The college was still chasing my paperwork. My CV had been claiming the degree since February, and now the claim was in my cold emails too.
He answered in twenty minutes: "My work does not really encourage interns to be a part of the process, for better or for worse." He pointed me to two government-backed small-business centres. Then came the line that should have stung more than it did: "there is a difference between what I do – primarily biz coaching – and career coaching, even if there are some clear overlaps."
I'd asked a business coach to teach me career coaching. He was too polite to say what that meant. As far as the inbox shows, I never contacted either centre. In May it had been life coaching. In July it was career coaching. Neither got past one email.
WHERE CAN I DO IT IN ENGLISH
Two days later I wrote to the programme coordinator, the one who'd chased me into registering:
"I hope you have everyrthing you need form me at this point. I still need to take the [entrance] test and I was wondering where I can do it in English."
Everyrthing. Form me.
He answered the next evening. The test was given in English, in another city, by appointment, and he sent the number to call. Under that he put three links to practice questions: analogies, number series, verbal classification.
The college's automated system didn't agree that they had "everything you need." On the eighteenth and again on the second of August it sent the same line it had sent before: "You need to urgently upload the necessary documents."
On the eighteenth I asked him: "When can I come to meet up?"
Nineteen minutes later he wrote, "I'm flexible," and told me his neighbourhood.
Three hours after that: "Did we talk about the [entrance] exam?"
I didn't answer for six days. Then, on a Monday morning: "Any chance we can meet up today?"
He asked if I could come to his neighbourhood. "Yes is 4 ok?" He suggested a hotel. "Sounds good. See you then."
The thread stops there for the month. Nothing says what I brought, whether the meeting counted as an interview, or whether I ever called the exam number. A few days after the month ended he wrote again, asking how the studying was going. That's next month's problem.
CHEAPEST AVAILABLE IS THE BEST
The Sunday before that, I'd written to a print shop:
"Hi, Id like to order thank you cards. I want plain cards that fold and on top it has the monogram from the weddinginvitation. It is attached."
Nothing was attached. They wrote back the next morning: "There's no attachment. How many? What color should the monogram be?"
I answered nearly four days later, at twenty to three in the morning: "Maybe 100, do you have the original monogram still?"
Their quote came that morning: "The price is 300 for cheaper paper and an almost matching envelope. Or 400 [...] for a perfect match, higher quality paper. Yes, we have your monogram."
On Monday I wrote, "Ok well take the 300 option thanks!" That afternoon they sent four designs.
Then I went quiet for a week, and came back with this:
"Hi two things 1 ) thats not our monogram attatched [...] 2 ) we realy need those card by friday, i dont care at all what they look like. Cheapest available is the best. Is that a possibilty? Sorry for late response i have been having trouble with my email lately"
Five minutes earlier I'd sent a different email without any trouble.
Two days later they answered. Friday was possible, "providing you email us your choice within the next couple of hours."
The outbox has no reply. On Saturday night their subject line read: "Thank you cards are ready in our office."
Nearly seven months later the same thread got one more message: "We printed your thank you cards and had them ready by the date you asked them to be ready (in July). We have been trying to reach you for months."
They hit my deadline, and I was the one who vanished. Going by that last line, nobody ever came in for the cards.
I'd spent months writing to people who didn't write back. That month, the one not writing back was me.
WHAT THE INBOX ALSO HELD
A funding shop's new CEO wrote to his whole list, with me in the blind copy: "We're sorry that [the last guy] left." Back in the winter I'd cold-emailed that last guy, claimed I worked with a property-funding company, and asked if he wanted to invest. He'd told me, "I am not an investor." I'd been on their list ever since.
The new man's menu had term loans, credit lines, "Fast credit repair," and "Merchant accounts (with no reserve) to sell products [...] (pharmaceuticals anyone?)." And there it was in plain words: "Cash advances for cash-strapped emergency bandaid situations."
I didn't answer. It's the first time that product shows up in my inbox by name.
A music school's list had me in the first slot of a voice-exam resit, at noon on the twenty-seventh. The inbox doesn't say whether I sat it. A week later a list from the same school sent a job ad, which translates as: "Music student? Looking for a job that brings in good money in no time?" A new venture wanted private music teachers. I'd been a private music teacher, and the guitar account hadn't taken a payment since March. I didn't apply.
A pool in the village I'd moved away from kept dropping bookings onto my calendar. The titles read like a ledger: a seminary, "110 boys," 2,760, the lifeguard's name. Fifty boys for 1,800. A hundred girls with a different lifeguard. My name was on the guest lists next to the lifeguards'. That looks like a summer job, but the records have no contract, no schedule and no pay. What the calendar does show is pricing, about 25 a head for the big group and 36 for the small one. Somebody there knew how to quote.
A social-media scheduling app sent weekly report cards: fourteen posts, then twenty-four, twenty-one and fifteen. One week showed "332 new followers," "170 unfollowers," "2 link clicks." It told me, "You shared something. Every. Single. Day." The followers came in and nothing else came of it.
On the last day of July I emailed a man at a youth football league, with no subject and no greeting: "Defense 1) 3-4 2) odd 3) man 4) ss 5) nt 6) contain Offense 1) 21 2) te 3) zone." It looks like answers to something, but the question isn't in the mailbox.
There's nothing in the window about the Wednesday flag football, nothing from the boy's mother, and nothing from the evening-programme organiser.
As for money, the payment service's summaries for June and July said the same thing: no international transactions. There were no lesson receipts. That made four months running.
WHAT I TOOK FROM THAT MONTH
Don't introduce yourself as the thing you're about to be. "I am a student" got me a polite no and a correction I didn't hear.
Before you ask an expert for an apprenticeship, find out what he actually does. Biz coaching isn't career coaching, and he told me so in one sentence.
"Everyrthing you need form me" isn't the same as everything they need. The automated system told me the truth every two weeks.
Going cheap is fine. Disappearing isn't. The printer made my Friday deadline, and I never came for the cards. If I'd been the vendor, I'd have sent that last email too.
And when an inbox finally shows you "cash advances for cash-strapped emergency bandaid situations," read it twice. Somebody on the other end is counting on you not to.