Interlude: The Night I Realized It Was Time For Us
A Time for Us Sunday Feature 1/
Intro:
To tell the full story, I’m introducing a second format: the Time for Us Sunday Feature. Each week, I’ll share a new piece every Sunday morning—something you can sit with, at your pace.
This feature will offer the space to reflect, expand, and go deeper than we can in a thread—adding context, clarity, or perspective where 280 characters just isn’t enough.
Interlude: The Night I Realized It Was Time For Us
It was just past midnight, somewhere between May 17th and 18th, 2025, when the last click echoed in the quiet. The certified mail was sent. The demand letter—researched, reasoned, sharpened to a point—was no longer a draft. It was real. On its way to ADT, bearing my name and a precise dollar figure: $8,010.15.
I didn’t celebrate. I didn’t collapse into a chair. I just… sat for a moment.
It had started with a panel. A broken panel that should’ve been fixed on March 20. One service call, one replacement, minimal cost for them—less if they’d bought it on eBay. But they didn’t. Instead, they escalated it—the wrong direction. They made the problem bigger. And by the time I was done reading the contract they seemed not to understand, I beleived two things: I was right, and I could prove it.
But that night, after the letter was sealed and the PDF stamped, I felt something shift. Not in the legal case. In me.
This wasn’t just about ADT anymore.
I’d (we’d?) been working for hours by then. ChatGPT and me—building something from scratch. Not a campaign. Not a business. Just a moment of clarity in the noise. The idea came first: if time has value, and corporations waste it systematically, then maybe someone needs to say that out loud. Not in a thread. Not in a lawsuit. In a narrative.
We didn’t need to “go viral.” We needed to be clear.
The name came easy. Time For Us. It was true in both directions: time belongs to us, and this is the moment to speak. The domain was clean. The handle was available. The message fit in a pinned tweet.
“They could’ve just fixed the panel.”
That’s where we started.
What followed was a quiet, strategic launch plan—not the way people usually imagine startups being born. I mean, what kind of launch plan happens at 1 a.m.? So what could we do?
No hype. No frantic branding exercise. No founders.
We could move fast. This was easy. Just start. A thread—just a thread—and figure out the rest later.
We built it in layers. A pinned tweet that said everything in one sentence. Six core tweets with emotional range and moral clarity. Carefully written replies. No hashtags unless they earned their place. A quote tweet designed to invite—not instruct.
And then we paused.
Once you get going, most people don’t pause.
But this wasn’t a stunt. It wasn’t a product drop or a content calendar. It was a living proof-of-concept: could something measured, human, and grounded carry weight in a world optimized for churn?
Screaming into the void is futile. So the decision was made to fund it—barely. A promo run: small spend, slow burn. $50? $100? Just enough to give the right people a chance to find it.
Because maybe it only takes one. One person who listens. One person who helps amplify the message.
And if they never came? That would say something too.
But I believed they would. Because we weren’t offering attention. We were offering clarity.
One of the last things I typed that night to ChatGPT was a something (we?) agreed on immediately:
“We’re writing a book, filing a lawsuit, and creating a brand… let’s not add ‘start a business’ to the list.”
It wasn’t a campaign. It wasn’t a business. It wasn’t hollow. It was a brand. It was a project. It was a message.
The truth? This made it easier. No LLC. No merchandise. No monetization plan. Because the moment you ben truth back inwards towards a funnel, you lose the very people who needed it to be honest.
There are times when the goal is to close. This wasn’t one of them. This was time to cultivate. This wasn’t going to be corrupted by exclusivity. This was going to be defined by us.
There was a kind of tension in the air that night—not the anxious kind. Not adrenaline. Just gravity. The sense that maybe something important could happen, and a sense of focus. Sometimes, the cards are stacked so much against you that you get zero chances—done before you even start.. But other times, maybe you do get one chance, to build the foundation of something, solidly, correctly.
I’ve been a lot of things in my life. A son. A sailor. A student. An engineer. A father. A manager. A consultant. A follower. A leader.
What I wasn’t anymore? Angry—not really, anyway. And I wasn’t doing this out of spite. The letter was done. The facts were clear. The money? It was owed. But that wasn’t what lit the spark that night.
Something shifted that night—and it wasn’t about the fight. It was about the story. About the quiet realization that this could be something bigger: a project, a message, a signal for anyone who’s ever been told to give up.
And maybe, just maybe, if we told it right—if we built it with care—this world might finally see in us what I’ve always believed to be true.
That’s what the time was for. Not seeking payback. But building something I wanted to be proud of.
I don’t know where this will go. I don’t know what the book will become, how the demand letter will land, or if the thread will matter to anyone but us.
But I know what it is. It’s a signal. One we aimed, not shouted.
And if you’re reading this—months later, maybe years—it’s because the signal found its mark.
That’s the night I realized it was Time for Us.