Just no, full stop

Annual review with Dale. He said excellent retention three times, which I counted, and then asked whether I had thought about taking on two more. And I said no. Just no. Full stop. No softening clause, no "not right now", no explanation about capacity or the quality of the work I would be able to do at twenty four. I said no and then I did not fill the silence. Four years at that practice and I did not know I could do that. He blinked, moved on to the CPD budget, and the meeting ended four minutes early. Nothing happened. That is the astonishing part. I had a whole apparatus built for the aftermath of saying no to Dale Hutchins — the follow-up email softening it, the extra availability offered quietly in a fortnight — and none of it was needed, because he asked a question and received an answer and filed it. I sat in my car afterwards for a bit, which is becoming a theme in this journal, but this time it was a good sit. Told Danny at dinner and he laughed and said, what did you think he was going to do, and I said honestly I had not got that far, and he said that is because you were not scared of him, you were scared of being somebody who says no. Which is the single most incisive thing my fiancé has said in about a year, delivered with a fork in his hand, apparently without effort.

Laughed and changed the subject, obviously. He does this maybe three times a year. He is not analytical about people as a rule and then occasionally he puts down a sentence like that and does not appear to notice he has done it. I think I did not want to make a thing of it in case making a thing of it stopped him doing it.