You are watching the little clock in the corner of the screen more than the faces, and I understand why, but oh, I wish you'd look up.
Four of them, boxed into their squares. Marcus with the plant behind him that never grows. Priya, whose cat walks across the keyboard around minute twelve, every time, and everyone laughs the small laugh of people pretending they'd rather be here. You have muted yourself to sigh. I remember that sigh. It felt so important, the injustice of it, that you were doing more than your share, that this meeting could have been an email.
Here is the thing I know now that you cannot: you will not remember a single deliverable. Not one slide, not the deadline you fought about, not who dropped the ball. That whole crisis dissolves like sugar.
What stays is Priya's cat. What stays is the way Marcus always said "does that make sense?" after everything, so gently, like he was afraid of taking up room. You will think of him at odd times for the rest of your life and never once know why.
You have three people looking at you right now who will scatter into other cities, other names, and mostly you will lose them. Not dramatically. Just the ordinary way. A moved account. A number that stops working.
So don't rush anyone off the call today. When someone lingers after the work is done, telling a story that has nothing to do with anything, let them. That part was never the waste. That part was the whole meeting.
You may unmute now. Say something kind. You have the time.
I promise you have so much more of it than you think.