April 23/Jana. Folders. Alive.

The meeting happened. I didn't die.

Jana runs the agency with the focused chaos of someone who is excellent at the creative work and has simply never had time for the structural layer underneath it. Within ten minutes I'd found three things: handoffs happening in WhatsApp threads, invoicing consistently two weeks late, and no one able to locate the master client folder because there were four of them, all named 'Clients Final.'

I didn't oversell. I described what I saw, quietly, like reading from a manual. Jana nodded throughout with the expression of someone hearing their own symptoms named by a doctor.

She asked what I'd charge. I named a number. She said okay without negotiating. I've since been told this means I undercharged.

On the U-Bahn home I sat with my Founder's Notebook and thought: this is real. Someone gave me money to do a thing. I texted Anja. A thumbs up. Then, three minutes later: 'I'm proud of you.' I read it four times.

I didn't tell Klaus until I'd sat with it a little. He would have been genuinely happy for me, and I wasn't ready to share it yet.