It didn’t seem like that long ago when I was boarding a plane in this very airport. In fact, it was less than a week ago. A lot has changed since then. It doesn’t take long for life to change, especially when the changes are bad.

Mother Theresa once said that months can be spent building something, and it could be torn down in a day. She’s obviously right. I spent so much time and effort building up this company and making great things happen. In just a few days, it unraveled and became about as useful as a rejected pap-smear test.

God, how the hell did this happen? I slid my airline ticket into a scanning machine, and got the clear to board the aircraft. As I pulled my wheeled luggage behind me, I had to make sense of it. I had to think.

The problem with thinking is that it’s never easy to do when emotional or upset. Thoughts that result from anger are often wrong or badly judged. Rationality requires the elimination of anger. So, I had to first do that – get rid of my anger.

Once I could dispel the anger, I could then rationalize a plan to take care of the problem. I knew one thing – this was far from over. I wasn’t just going to let them kick me in the ribs without biting back. Actions have consequences.

If I learned only one thing from this entire experience, it’s that there are consequences. My lying and erotic behavior laid waste to my life. I knew that. I just had to get past that, and make a plan to recover my damn life.

I did something that sounds a little silly, if not juvenile. When I got to my cramped airline seat, I plugged earphones into my iPhone and tuned into Spotify. I found some relaxing, easygoing classical music.

To make it a little better, I closed my eyes to disconnect any visual stimuli and imagined myself being on a tropical beach, just lying in the sand without a care in the world. It helped some. I still realized I had some major problems, but it helped.

After thirty minutes of doing that (thank God for the takeoff delay), I was able to assuage a lot of my anger. Anger reduced. Check! Now, I had to think about what to do, and how to do it.

The first was a question of priorities. I knew I had a lot of things to do, but could only do one thing at a time. So, what should come first? What was the highest priority?

I surprised myself a little bit when I determined that Maya was the most important part to me. For so many years of my life, I had prioritized money and business success. In fact, I would guess that is the case of what most CEOs want – money and business success. How can a competent CEO exist without those priorities?

So, would Maya still be pissed off? Probably. If what I did wasn’t so aggravating and offense, she probably wouldn’t have left in the first place. I didn’t (and still don’t) see her as a person that has an irrational, anger problem. She was mad, and to some extent, I can understand why.

Step one would be to hunt down Maya and have a talk with her. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I don’t know her terribly well, and I think it would be easiest to just go to her office. Besides, she’s a reliable person and would probably be there if I dropped in.

After speaking to her, I might be able convince her to meet with me (God willing), and then we could have a chat about us. At some point, I would have to apologize for the fact that her business had lost the contract.

I figured I could alleviate a little of that pain – just a little. I could make clear to her that the decision to not award the contract to her company was one that the board had forced upon me. Indeed, it was not my call. Maybe I could draw a little sympathy by letting her know that they fired me.

I didn’t know if I could get any sympathy, though. The last time I tried that (when I plotted to convince the board that Maya engaged in cheating), it blew up in my face before I was able to even launch that plan. Would the same happen here?

I mentally shrugged my shoulders and came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. Maya would probably find out I was fired within a short amount of time anyway. In fact, she might even know before I could show up and tell her.

I felt a tap on my shoulder from the flight attendant. She was bright and smiley, and gave a little warmth to my emotions. “Sir, can you turn off your iPhone since we’re in the air?”

I smiled back at her and quickly hit a few buttons to disconnect the signal. I closed my eyes and drifted off into a sleep. I needed a nice nap. It was a long flight back to Seattle, and I needed my brain to be in top function. I had a long road ahead of me.

“Hi. Is Ms. Maya Blake here? I’m one of her business partners and would like to speak to her, if I could” I politely said to this lady who looked like she had a rough day. She had some bruises and a brace on her arm. It wasn’t a full cast, but it was obviously meant to stabilize her arm. She looked rough. I felt bad for her.

She grinned over at me right after I asked that. Sometimes with women, they do that when they are checking out a man. I think that might have been the case with me, but I wasn’t sure. I think it might have been the case when this other lady walked in and greeted me with the same, stupid grin. “Hello. My name is Franca. Is there something we can help you with?”

I chuckled a few times and waved my hand dismissively at her. “No, no. I just talked to this nice lady here, and told her that I wanted to speak to Maya.”

She finally released her grin and turned it into a nice smile. “Oh, I see. Maya actually just went to the store to get some new inkjets. She’ll be back in about ten minutes if you want to wait.”

Ten minutes of waiting? Bah! It’s just funny sometimes how we (as people) hurry up to get something done, then find out that we have to wait. Right after I got off the plane, I rented a car and drove here without even stopping at home. I did that for the purpose of getting things done quickly. And now? I would have to wait.

“Okay” I said with a nod as I reached over to sit on a laminate chair with steel legs. Right after I sat down, I discovered that the foot of the chair was broken. I surprisingly jolted out to the side. Then Franca, aka ‘Princess Obvious’ had something to say. “Be careful with that chair. The foot is broken.”

I smiled and bopped my head at her until she turned around and walked away. I did a visual scan of the room. There was no coffee pot. There were no snacks. There was only one chair. There was a wooden table with a lot of scratches. The lamp that was on top of the table had a plastic, white lampshade with cracks in it.

The walls were at least clean, but plain. I thought it was a little ironic that a place that specializes in interior décor had such a shabby looking lobby. The entrance was nothing to crow about either. It was plan, and looked like it was converted from a different type of building.

I did find one thing while I was waiting. There was a magazine (just one) from a company called Mother Earth. When I opened it and scrolled the pages, I saw a lot of stuff about gardening. Gardening is not my forte, but I read what I could from it.

The most interesting part that I found was a tip about how to repel deer from a garden naturally. It showed a middle-aged, skinny lady dumping human hair around the perimeter of the garden. The article then went on to claim that deer would not approach the garden, because they hate the smell of human hair.

“Tyler?”

I looked over and saw a very familiar face – Maya. She didn’t look mad, but she looked a little surprised that I showed up in her office. I had the advantage that she would need to be professional, too. She couldn’t just give me the finger and walk off. Not while she was at work. “Maya, it’s so nice to see you. I was wondering if we could chat in private? Perhaps we could chat at the park?”

“You’re Tyler?” said the gimpy girl who gave me a dazed look. At that moment, I realized that I had not told her who I was.

Seattle doesn’t have very many sunny days. Even on days when it isn’t raining, it is usually dark and gloomy. Today was an exception. The weather was sunny, and crisp.

It was about seventy degrees and the sun was broad and bright. I saw a nearby robin that fluttered by after it had danced around on the ground in an apparent effort to get food. I saw a few squirrels, and even a chipmunk.

The park was pretty quiet, which was nice. Sometimes, the park gets busy when the weather is really nice – because everyone gets out to enjoy the weather. Maybe it was an unexpected, sunny day. I didn’t know, because I obviously had bigger things on my mind than the weather.

Maya was walking beside me, and I didn’t try to hold her hand – even though I wanted to. I was already on thin ice with her. As I saw it, I already got the chance to have a meeting with her, and she agreed. Therefore, anything else would be an added bonus.

I found a wooden bench and waved Maya over to sit on it. The legs were steel – perhaps even wrought iron. The wood on the bench was a little stained and was starting to mildew just a bit. Not surprising, really – given how much rain Seattle usually gets.

I cleared my throat and put out my cries for mercy and forgiveness. “Maya, I came all this way to tell you that I’m really sorry that I lied to you. I take responsibility and I have no excuse for doing that.”

She pulled her head back but kept her eyes focused right on my eyes. “Really? Are you saying that because you just want to get your job back? Is this another one of your bullshit schemes?”

There it was. She already knew that I lost my job. No surprise, really. When a CEO like me loses his job (especially for bad reasons), it is only a matter of short time before everyone finds out. “So, you knew, huh?”

She tightly held her hands together with her fingers laced, and moved her hands away from mine. “Yeah. I also know that your board terminated our contract. Did you even know that?”

I sulked because she found out about that, too. That was strike two. “Actually, I did know about that. If I remember correctly, that was the last comment they told me after they fired me, and I stormed out of the room.”

She huffed out a sarcastic scoff and rolled her eyes at me. I’ll admit that I sounded pretty pathetic. In just a few days time, I got skinned and boiled down to bare bones. “So, what now? Why are you even here, Tyler? Did you come by just to get in my pants again?”

“No. You see, I really like you and think you’re very special. I’ve never liked any woman as much as I like you. Like my mom mentioned, you’re the only one I’ve ever taken to my penthouse. I just want you to give me another chance. Okay? We can go in baby steps if you want” I said as I reached over to her folded hands and tried to hold them sweetly.

She didn’t move her hands at all. She just stared into my eyes and waited. She didn’t look angry or resentful, but she looked like she was searching for something. Maybe she was searching for the truth. She might have been looking for signs that I was being honest with her. “Please, just give me one more chance, just one. Let me take you out to dinner.”

She took a full nine seconds to respond. I’m not kidding. To this day, I still don’t know what was going through her mind, or her imagination. She finally agreed. “Okay. The first baby step is just one dinner.”