37 Professional problems

"Are you still depressed because of Clara?" I asked.

"I'm not sure." He said.

"She was the starting point of my downfall. When she left me, I did not care about anything else. I let go of my life. Now I'm trying to pick the pieces together but every time I try, it seems like I'm falling two steps backwards. I wonder what's the point? I keep on reliving the same day over and over again. I just could not move forward. The ghosts of the past haunt me." He said.

His gaze was a confused one. His eyebrows furrowed deep. Instinctively I lay my free hand on his forehead; gently sliding my hand over those worry lines.

"One step at a time. It's only human to fall back now and then. Give yourself time." I said softly.

I looked at his face. He need not look older than he was. I thought that getting him to talk would be the only one thing I could do, since he did not want me to warm up his bed the other way.

"Talk to me. What's going over your mind about things which really matter to you? Things which are material possessions." I said, putting emphasis on the word "things".

"Remember the work I was telling you about just now? I was barely started on a business proposal to save my company from bankruptcy. The deadline is due tomorrow; the meeting's right after lunch hour at two. The Board is giving me another chance to prove myself. I promised the shareholders that I would have a solution by tomorrow. But for hours I sat like an idiot facing the blank screen. When I sat down to write, my mind froze..." He said.

He spoke in a worried tone. He glanced at me. I saw fear of the unknown in his eyes. His back tensed just speaking about it. I kneaded his tight shoulders. I felt his muscles tense abruptly at my initial touch, and then as I carried on kneading, his shoulders became limp; devoid of any pressure. He had begun to relax.

"I also have a vote of no-confidence coming up should my proposal fail. But I fear losing my mind the most. I am going cranky, if not crazy. One day I'll be a real mad man." He said.

Words after words. Actions after actions. I felt his pain and not surprisingly, his feelings over the many challenges strewn in his path. I too had questioned my own sanity.

"You had begun on a proposal to save your company. Can you tell me more about this proposal?" I asked.

I thought first things first. Deciding which was a matter of priority and working from there seemed to be the best solution.

"I am the CEO of a network hardware company which owns a few other subsidiaries in construction and landscaping. My proposal is to change our customer base. We are currently selling our hardware products to corporate customers but I think that we should start selling to resellers as they are companies that do sell equipment for the big manufacturers, who in turn might want to add installation and maintenance of the network to the package. We would make a tenfold profit here." He said.

He went on further about balance sheets and annual profits. He also believed that auctioning assets from their international offices was a good idea. He wanted to close down branches which had lone engineers who lacked enough work to fill their time.

I nodded. It was quite technical.

"Do you understand what I am talking about?" He asked.

Some clients would talk business to me in a condescending way, figuring out for themselves that I was clueless. They would show their superiority over me by talking in complicated business jargon. Mr. Boardmann however, was genuinely concerned about my understanding of these concepts.

I appreciated this gesture.