On the 12th of March I resigned from one client, started as fractional CEO of another, a SaaS company, on the condition nobody minded me automating as much of the job away as I could, and had two separate job leads fall over in the same afternoon. One wanted someone cheaper. The other wouldn't match what I'd asked for. By dinner I was telling myself, and apparently meaning it, that I wasn't in the slightest bit surprised or upset.
That's roughly how the whole job hunt ended this month: not with an offer, but with something better shaped than one. I picked up a couple more fractional roles alongside it, building and leading the AI and automation work, and the weeks filled up fast — high-paced, and the first work in a while I'd have chosen on its own terms. There'd been a good process earlier in the year, a Head of AI role that went further than most, real interviews, real interest, until it stalled on how many days a week they wanted me in an office I wasn't going to move the family near. This is where it landed instead.
That same week I sat down to a burger with a friend who was between things himself, both of us working through app ideas neither of us would build. Around then Fox went onto the payroll for picking up dog poo, on the strict understanding that if he missed a day he didn't get paid for it and still had to do it. He thought that was outrageous. I thought it was the fairest job description I'd written all month.
That was also the week his Fortnite account got stolen, through a fake site that asked for his password and his two-factor code, and he just gave them. He was as upset as if someone had broken into the house. I put money toward a new account and gave him one line to keep: you never give anyone else the key. I've spent this whole month handing mine to strangers in meetings, hoping they'll be careful with it, which is maybe why it came out of me so fast.
Earlier, on our anniversary, we ate yakitori, then somehow ended up at an outdoor singalong with a conga line, and I found myself telling a room of strangers about being fourteen, flown to Melbourne with severe scoliosis, a bucket of blood for the flight, a surgeon who sent me off afterward to go chase girls around the block. Someone at our table said something over the pie earlier that day that's stuck with me since, I genuinely don't remember which of us: I would like to go out and be an idiot some day. Wouldn't that be fun. We didn't, not that night. It's still on the list.
