The first evidence of the new job is not an announcement. It is an email test.
Saturday's test went from my personal Gmail account to the support address at the new company. A reply came back: “This works.” Another response reached me from my new work address. That one said, simply, “Reply back.”
There was nothing elegant about the exchange, but it established the path in both directions. Personal account to support. Work account to personal. Reply through the thread. The address existed, the routing worked, and I could move to the next item.
This was normal systems work for me by then. A service was never complete because its configuration file looked correct. I wanted to see the message leave one environment, arrive in another, and return through a reply. The test needed to cross the same boundaries a real message would cross.
The company names in the archive overlap. The offer came through A-Trust, while the operating email domain and several colleagues used Profit Services. I am preserving that ambiguity instead of forcing the records into a cleaner story than they support. The practical part is clear: I had accepted the job, received an account, and was already checking the communications system.
I was also still adjusting the rest of my life around the change. July messages show me looking at used furniture and trying to coordinate a puppy traveling across the country. The technical setup sat beside those ordinary logistics. A new job did not pause anything else.
This position would be brief. By September I would be interviewing again, including with a young online music company in Denver. That does not make this test meaningless. Short jobs still add people, systems, and lessons to the path.
For this weekend, the accomplishment was modest and useful: two addresses, two directions, and a reply that made it all the way back.