I was not supposed to be awake at five forty-seven in the morning.
I was awake because of an email I had made the mistake of reading at eleven forty-five the previous night. It was a detailed, aggressive message from a client about a timeline that violated every known constraint of physics and practical construction, written in the particular tone of someone who had confused having money with having authority over the laws of structural engineering.
My brain had engaged with the problem and declined to disengage. By two in the morning I had drafted and deleted three responses. By three I had drafted a fourth that was professional and clear and left no room for misinterpretation, scheduled it to send at seven-thirty so it wouldn't arrive in the middle of the night. By four I had accepted
