✏️ Memo #4 — The Tabs I Keep Open
By Thursday evening, I had survived three days at FFS.
Three.
Which, in startup time, is apparently enough to be onboarded, aligned, activated, and assigned a spreadsheet no one admits is a spreadsheet.
I came home with a branded water bottle, a notebook full of acronyms, and the distinct sense that I had accidentally joined a wellness cult with project deadlines.
The sensible thing would have been to make dinner.
Possibly fold laundry.
Maybe answer Jake’s text from earlier, which said:
Jake: How’s the new job going? Still fun?
Still fun.
There is something very Jake about asking if a job is “still fun” on day three, as if employment is a resort activity with towel service.
I stared at the message for a while.
Then I put my phone face down and opened my laptop.
Not to avoid him.
Obviously.
Just because I needed to check something.
One small thing.
A completely practical thing.
Train routes along the coast of Portugal.
This is how it starts, by the way.
Not with a dramatic decision. Not with a suitcase on the bed. Not with a woman gazing bravely out a window while a cello plays.
It starts with one search.
Then another.
Then suddenly you have seven tabs open, and one of them is a boutique guesthouse with white curtains, blue shutters, and a breakfast terrace where no one has ever said “operational calm activation sync.”
I did not book anything.
Let’s be clear.
I am not reckless.
I am a grown woman with passwords, dental appointments, and a favourite frying pan.
I simply looked.
Looking is not a crime.
Looking is research.
And if a person happens to search:
best coastal towns for women travelling alone “of a certain age”
and then:
how much luggage is too much luggage for a train
and then:
small hotels with excellent coffee and no group activities
that does not mean she is having a crisis.
It means she is gathering data.
For awareness.
Possibly for the universe.
The first place I found had a tiled courtyard and a description that said:
Perfect for slow mornings and quiet reinvention.
Which felt aggressive.
I had not asked to be seen by a hotel listing.
I clicked away immediately.
Then clicked back.
The second place had linen curtains, a reading chair, and a small balcony overlooking what appeared to be exactly the sort of street where a woman could buy tomatoes, mind her business, and become mysteriously unavailable to people who use the word “circle back.”
I saved it.
In a folder called:
Recipes
Because I am not new.
My daughter texted while I was comparing train times.
Maya: How’s the new job?
Me: Fine. Weird. Lots of oat milk.
Maya: Sounds healthy.
Me: There is a room called The Nest.
Maya: Immediate no.
Me: Thank you.
Maya: Are you making friends?
Me: I own a spreadsheet. Same thing.
Maya: Proud of you, I guess?
From Maya, this was practically a sonnet.
She is twenty-four, fluent in sarcasm, and deeply suspicious of any emotion that arrives without a meme.
I adore her.
I also try not to tell her too much, because daughters have a way of looking at your life and seeing the structural issues before you have finished explaining the wallpaper.
Maya once told me that Jake had “placeholder energy.”
I said that was unfair.
She said, “Is it?”
Which was irritating, because no one enjoys being parented by someone they taught to use a spoon.
Jake and I have been together long enough that people have stopped asking where it is going, which is either a sign of acceptance or fatigue.
He is kind.
He is steady.
He owns proper walking shoes and believes most problems can be improved by having a sandwich.
There is nothing wrong with Jake.
This, inconveniently, is part of the problem.
It is much easier to leave something when it is terrible.
Terrible gives you energy. Terrible gives you clarity. Terrible lets you say things like, “I simply could not stay,” while people nod and offer you wine.
Fine is harder.
Fine sits beside you on the sofa, asks whether you want the last biscuit, and makes you feel like a monster for wondering if your soul might prefer a train station.
I answered him eventually.
Me: New job is strange but survivable. How was your day?
Jake: Same old. You around this weekend?
Me: I think so.
I think so.
The official slogan of women who have not yet admitted they are somewhere else in their head.
I shut my phone again.
Then opened another tab.
This one was not Portugal.
It was a small town in southern France with a weekly market, pale stone buildings, and a guesthouse that offered “independent stays for women seeking space to think.”
Honestly.
The internet needs to stop flirting with me.
I imagined myself there.
Not permanently. Not dramatically.
Just for a few days.
No work calls.
No vague men.
No rooms named after birds.
No one asking me to unlock my workplace energy.
Just coffee.
A notebook.
A street I did not know.
The delicious anonymity of being a woman no one needed for a minute.
That is the part no one tells you about midlife.
It is not always about wanting to become someone completely different.
Sometimes you just want to find out who you are when no one is asking you to be useful.
I have been useful for decades.
At work.
At home.
In relationships.
In emergencies.
In group chats.
In the emotional management of people who should have come with clearer instructions.
Useful is my native language.
But lately, I have started to wonder what I might say if no one handed me a problem first.
At FFS, ironically, they think I have arrived to help them create calm.
Which is funny, because I have not felt calm since approximately 2017.
But I do know how to bring order to chaos.
I know how to find the missing owner, name the decision, build the list, get the room to stop vibrating.
I can do that.
I have always been able to do that.
What I do not know is whether I can do it for myself.
Nina texted just as I was looking at a photo of a terrace that had the audacity to include bougainvillea.
Nina: Are you alive?
Me: Define alive.
Nina: Wine or witness protection?
Me: Research.
Nina: Oh God. What are we researching?
Me: Coastal towns. Train routes. Small hotels. Nothing alarming.
Nina: That is literally how every woman starts before buying linen trousers and changing her name.
Me: I already own linen trousers.
Nina: Then we’re further along than I feared.
I laughed.
Out loud, which startled me.
The flat was quiet after that.
Not lonely, exactly.
Just mine.
There were dishes in the sink, a blazer on the chair, and seven open tabs glowing on the screen like tiny exits.
I made toast for dinner because I am a woman of both ambition and realism.
Then I opened the FFS notebook Willow had given me on day one.
On the first page, under the printed words What are you here to unlock?, I had written:
My laptop.
Underneath it, I wrote something else.
Not a plan.
Not yet.
Just a sentence.
Maybe I am not looking for an escape. Maybe I am looking for evidence.
Evidence that there are still places I have not been.
Evidence that I can still surprise myself.
Evidence that my life is not finished arranging itself.
Then I closed the notebook.
Closed six of the tabs.
Left one open.
A small inn. White curtains. Blue shutters. Morning light on a terrace.
For research.
Obviously.
B.
