Subject Line and a Question Mark 🙋🏻‍♀️

I sent an email at 9:14 on a Tuesday. Short. Two questions, both of them answerable in a sentence.

I got a reply at 4:47 that began with *Hi*, and then told me about a meeting that happened in March.

Not a long reply. It wasn't that kind of dodge. It was maybe four sentences, all about budget cycles and timelines, and not one word about either of my questions. I read it twice to be sure I'd understood. I had. The questions were simply gone, replaced by something adjacent and cheerful.

So I wrote back. I said, politely, just circling on my two questions below, pasted them again underneath like an offering.

She replied Thursday. This time she said *sorry for the delay* and then told me the timeline she thought we were on. Which was a timeline. From someone else. On a different project.

I have now sent four emails. Each one shorter than the last, not because I have less to say but because the length of the thing is what's wearing me down. Number four was basically a subject line and a question mark.

Three weeks in she answered. Both questions. Properly, in two sentences, with no mention of March.

I don't even feel angry about it anymore. I just re-read my own email history looking for the sentence where I lost her, and it's not there. I wrote a normal email. Two questions, one message, nothing weird. Somewhere between the send button and the reply it stopped being about my questions and became a thing she had to get through.

I'll keep emailing her. I have to. She's the only person who knows the budget cycle.

Anyway. She's very responsive.