For some reasons, the world has decided to throw successive curveballs at me from the past.
In today’s episode, one of my former associates from when I was a partner at a big firm contacted me. When I met her, she was in a professional tailspin. She had been misused, mismanaged, and mistreated by some of my partners. They saw their failure as hers, and were ready to fire her. She was demoralized and ready to quit. I took her under my wing, and she flourished because she was smart and capable all along. She was fun to work with, and I liked her. She had guts, which is a rare thing and she never panicked.
She was the first one that I ever invested in that I lost when she got poached by an LA firm, and that experience was very educational for me professionally. We have loosely stayed in touch, and I have wished her well as she has moved through a couple of well known firms.
Apparently, that is at an end. For whatever reason, she wants out of that world and contacted me to see if we could work together again, 6 years after she decided that this path wasn’t for her. I’d like to help her, but everything has changed and somebody else stepped into the opportunity that was once hers. You can't go back in time, and that moment of opportunity came and went. I am thinking about it, but I can't really see anything for her, and I feel bad about it. Am I too cold about this?