Memory feed served up this less than flattering pic. About one week after I lost that headbutting contest with Edinburgh's cobblestone streets.
Eight weeks of recovery.
It also happened to be the same four weeks we spent negotiating definitive documents and closing the ATIS recap after 12 years of building.
So I showed up to every one of those calls looking roughly like this.
I thought about it the first time. Camera off? Some explanation up front to get ahead of it? A joke to make it smaller?
I probably did some version of all of that. Old habit. Manage the surface before anyone else can.
Nobody flinched. Not once. The lawyers kept working. The other side kept working. The deal closed.
Turns out the thing I was worried about protecting was not the thing anyone was evaluating.
I would like to tell you I just gutted out those eight weeks. That is not what happened.
My wife ran the parts of life I could not. My partners covered the calls I was not sharp enough to take. Family and friends checked in on the days I went quiet.
Those weeks ran on people who decided my bad stretch was their problem too.
What I carried out of it was not toughness.
It was a shorter list of things worth being embarrassed about, and a longer list of people I owe.