We sat in a row, backs to the window, laptops open. I looked around the room and felt a wave of affection for these men, this small group of misfits who were the only people who understood the backbone to my new life. On the other side of the table, the solutions manager paced back and forth, but he was smiling. He asked us to write down the names of the five smartest people we knew, and my coworkers dutifully obliged.

Smart in exactly what way, I wondered, capping and uncapping my pen. I was not accustomed to stack-ranking my friends by intelligence. I wrote five names down: a sculptor, a writer, a physicist, two graduate students. I looked at the list and thought about how much I missed them, how bad I’d been at returning phone calls and emails. I wondered how I’d stopped making time for the things and people I held dear. I felt blood rush to my cheeks.

“Okay,” the solutions manager said. “Now tell me, why don’t they work here?”