When you've talked over someone again

It'll happen after weeks of doing well. You'll be tired, or excited, or at your parents' table, and you'll jump, and only realise when you see the other person's face. Then the thought will come that you're back where you started.

You're not. One jump is one jump. The tally, if you were still keeping it, would show one mark on a day that used to have twenty. The habit that ran for decades will run again now and then, and the only question is what you do in the next two seconds.

The hand-back is the recovery. It's the same tool as always, and it works as well on the fortieth day as the first. Stop mid-word. "Sorry, go on." Wait for the finish. Count one. What happened was a slip, and the hand-back turns a slip into a demonstration that the rule is real, which is worth more to the other person than a week of clean finishes they didn't notice.

Work out which sign you missed. Was it a topic you care about too much? A person you've always jumped on? A room where everyone was doing it? Each of those has an answer in chapters 19 to 21, and the answer is a small adjustment. Put a pad on the table for that person. Leave a full second in that room.

If the jump was a bad one, in front of people or on something that mattered to them, a later word helps. Not a speech, and not that evening's third apology. Just "I talked over you earlier about the west region, I'm sorry, I'd like to hear the rest", and then hearing the rest. Most people, offered the tail back a few hours later, will give it, and giving it repairs more than the apology does.

No streaks. Don't count days without a jump. A streak makes the first slip feel like the end of something, and it isn't. Count finishes, if you count anything. The number of times this week you heard a tail you'd have missed. That number only goes up.