Realized my old pitches sounded like a robot trying to impress a dictionary. The moment of clarity hit when I attached a silly cat photo by mistake and wrote "hey, this is what I'm working on" and got a reply in five minutes. Threw away the thesaurus that day and yes, the response rate just keeps climbing the less I try to sound smart.

Yeah that reminds me of my grandpa... he used to practice his signature on the blank backs of those old phone book pages. He'd fill a whole page with loops and lines, just getting the feel for it. Said the paper was thin and kind of slick, almost like bank check paper. Makes total sense now, using stuff that was just going in the trash anyway to get your hand steady before the real thing. Kind of a lost art now, with everything being digital... and I guess phone books are too.