A thousand pinpricks of water punished his skin in the best way. Each drop growing into its own small river that traced an exploratory track down his body; soothing the aches of the road.
After a week of long hours in the car, sterile hotel rooms with their spineless beds, and days spent in all-consuming labor, shoring up the base of the company, this was necessary. Not for the first time, he stood beneath the spray of the shower and wondered why he kept on going.
It wasn’t the money that kept him tearing himself away from the home he loved – his family, his friends – every few weeks. The money wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the driver.
Passion was a loaded word. The work was good. It wasn’t made up of empty consumptive calories. He believed in it, but passion? Passion invoked fire and he didn’t know that he felt a ‘fire.’ It was worthy, but lighting a fire? He hated the question. He wasn’t on fire about anything. He wasn’t apathetic either. He just was.
As the water wrapped warm fingers around his body, his mind alit on friendship and people. After 25 years, he had a great many deep friendships within the company. People who’d gone to bat for him over the years or shown up when he was reeling.
And then there were the new folks, the ones just starting out, who needed a kind word or guidance on which path to take in the ever-more corporate and sterile ways of the company. That’s why he kept answering the calls. He owed it to the people who’d helped him and those who were new, who deserved better.
All that was well and good, but his body was weary in the bones. The water had soothed, but now he began to think of the comfort of his bed.
Drying himself off he wondered how much longer he’d be able to keep doing this; throwing everything he had into the ever-widening breaches created by the broken corporate culture.
As his head hit the pillow, he tried to remember back to the point where it broke. Before he could close in on the time, his mind drifted to sleep.
