You're invited: Already In A Meeting
Anna Milaeva
A short, funny novel with real parts work underneath. In English. Paperback and Kindle, and free on Kindle Unlimited.
"Everyone is already in a meeting. Not the calendar kind. The other one."Already In A Meeting
Who's in the meeting
Five people at Arco, a wellness startup that has pivoted four times in eight months. Everyone is working. Everyone is performing. And every single one of them is in a different kind of meeting. Tap a card to see the one inside.
"No problem. I'll have it ready by 10."
"I need to stop being this available."
A part of her learned early that being useful is the same as being safe. It has never once taken a day off.
"This is our most important priority right now."
The words right now are doing a great deal of work.
A part of him converts every feeling into a plan before the feeling has time to land. Four pivots in eight months. Each one completely sincere.
"Three versions of every deck. Just in case."
Version A is what he said he wanted. Version B is what he actually wants. Version C is what she believes, and nobody asked for it.
Being right in private is better than not being right at all.
"Fine."
It means at least six different things.
An entire inner life, fully formed, continuously updated, rarely transmitted. When something matters, he makes tea instead of saying it.
"Just this week. Just until close."
She bills her life in six minute increments.
A part of her wanted support so badly, for so long, that it forgot how to accept any. She would decline the word burnout like a meeting request.
Also in attendance: a donkey with complete confidence, and a llama who has seen all of this before.
No parts were exiled in the writing of this novel. Several were finally heard.
Then the company books a retreat
Arco sells wellness. Arco has forgotten to be well. So the CEO does what CEOs do after an unintegrated spiritual experience: he books three days at a farm. Trust exercises. A sound bath. Laminated values cards. A fire. Two animals with strong opinions.
"Partners and plus ones welcome. Bring comfortable shoes."
What happens there is funny, and then quietly not, and then something better than both. Nobody comes back fixed. That was never the point.
Which one are you?
There is no wrong answer. All of your parts are welcome here. Even the one that skims.
The book leaves fifteen small doors like this one open, one after every few chapters. Reading them is optional. Noticing what they bring up is not, sorry.
The story is fiction. The meetings are real.
I spent over a decade in operations, in the rooms where things were breaking. Now I bring parts work, the method behind this story, into the lives of professionals and inside companies. Most rooms have an unspoken rule against talking about what is actually happening inside the people in them. I wrote a novel because stories get past that rule. If you saw yourself in any of these five, that is the door. The work behind the door is what I do.
There is also the Self-Journal, an 8-week companion for meeting your own parts. Kate would already have it filled in. Tom would say it's fine.
Anna Milaeva is a Level 3 IFS practitioner trained at the IFS Institute and a Certified Deep Transformational Coach, working with clients in more than 15 countries. She ran operations long enough to have opinions about calendar invites. This is her first novel. More about Anna →
The meeting continues on Substack
Essays every week or two about the inner life of work, relationships, and everything we carry into both. New stories land there first, and the cast may yet return. The llama has expressed no preference.
Take the meeting
A couple of evenings of reading. Something to take to work tomorrow that nobody else has to know about.
Get it on AmazonIf it makes you laugh, or makes you look at your own Tuesday differently, a short review on Amazon helps other readers find it. More than you would think.
"Beneath comment."
The Llama, early reader