2013: Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is published, and I skim it in an afternoon. “She wrote this whole book, when she could have just bought a Molotov cocktail for every woman in America,” I tell John. “I’ll never understand that choice.”

I can tell I’ve almost got him. “I just want to reiterate that the vlookup thing threw me,” he says. “That’s basic, basic stuff.” It’s tempting to confess that I also don’t know how to do a vlookup, but this probably isn’t the moment.

“It’s easy,” Ron says with a sweep of his hand. “Just change the world.”

I look up from my steno pad. “Sorry, what?”

“Change the world,” he repeats, “and when I go into that roomful of executives to make the case for you, it will be an easy sell.”

The faces of men in this org who’ve recently been promoted past me drift through my mind. Most of them seem more than competent, but I’m not aware of anything world changing they’ve done. There are only so many chances to invent the Kindle, after all. “Do you have thoughts about what that might look like in my role?” I ask. “Like … how will we know I’ve done it?” We’ve already become the largest translation publisher on the planet. We’re managing translations through proprietary software that as far as we know is the first of its kind. We are in the planning stages of expanding into eight other language pairings. If all of this is too small, then I need help knowing what big enough looks like.

Around this time, I also notice that my yoga practice no longer buffers my work worries, that even in the middle of savasana or a pose that requires all my focus, part of me is thinking about whether I’ll have a job next month. Clearly this is yoga’s fault. I need a more difficult practice, one where I could die if I’m not paying attention. Suddenly it seems obvious that my longtime neighborhood studio is geared toward sad and lazy people who don’t want to work hard. I embark on a sort of Hostility Tour of other studios around town, looking for one that can instill the fear of God in me, wiping out my fear of unemployment.

Wouldn’t you know it? It turns out every single yoga studio in the Greater Seattle area is for cowardly pussies. “My body is going to devolve with this level of lowest-common-denominator instruction,” I tell John, who wisely does not argue. I wonder if running, something I’ve avoided since eighth grade, might provide the level of distracting agony I require, and, boy, am I right. At first I pursue the sublime misery three times a week. But if three is good, five can only be better. Soon my right shin starts kind of squeaking, but I ignore it.

“Who gives a fuck? If you don’t have to put up with working at Amazon, do you really need to make Amazon money?”

That’s the million-dollar question. “My husband was horrified by what this bag cost,” Sally told me last week about the Marc Jacobs hobo she pulled the trigger on after weeks of contemplation. “But when you work at Amazon, you have to give yourself a present now and then.” Every Amazon woman I know has an equally high-achieving spouse, and also every one of us is outearning that spouse by a lot, just because of the batshit stock. John has never shown the slightest macho insecurity over it. Neither have most of the husbands; they’re evolved and smart enough to just feel lucky. But what’s too hard to explain to them is that we don’t feel overpaid. Amazon could be depositing a million dollars a month into my checking account and I would think, Yes, this seems about right, given the fear and the chaos and the ugly surroundings and the endlessly escalating demands and the way no one ever says thanks.

It hits me like brand-new news that I could just leave. I could even leave right now. Just drive away and never come back. John wouldn’t care; if anything, he’d be delighted. I’d be a failure, I think. But suddenly the word looks so small. Okay, let’s say you run screaming and become a failure. Do you care? What if you just … let yourself fail? I almost laugh out loud at the notion of deciding to let myself fail. But it’s inside me now, even if it sounds absurd, as physically impossible as willing myself to drown.

But everyone would know I failed, I think then. If I leave this job before I’ve nailed it.

So? Let’s say two hundred people write you off as a failure, but meanwhile you’re sober and not crying all the time. Would that be a fair trade-off?

I don’t know. The word “failure” is starting to look big again and I have to back away from it. But I store away the idea that failure could be exactly what I need. I add it to a mental list I started compiling the day I discovered the strawberry stand and realized I was interested in myself: You like wooden boats and flaky salt and having dahlias at your desk. Sometimes you tell yourself mean things when you run. You feel calmer when you go outside at lunchtime. If you don’t sleep well one night, you usually do the next. Having a whole mystery series to read makes you feel safe. You always thought you weren’t tough, but you are. You really do believe failure goes on some sort of permanent record. You can get weirdly absorbed in cleaning out a drawer. You try so hard to be good at things you don’t actually want to do. You never ask yourself if maybe you should just stop doing them.

“Maybe two more years,” I say. “Two more years should be long enough to get me promoted, right?” I’ve been two years from promotion for more than a decade now, but hey. “Four more vesting cycles.” This, at least, is solid. The future may be vapor, but the cash is real.

“Fine with me,” John says. “But how do you feel when you say that?”

“Angry,” I say, with a hard stop that indicates nothing more is coming.