Need To Find a New Mistress

It was not a surprise to me when several years ago I lost my job as the President of a company manufacturing products for the automotive industry. Due to the continual turmoil in that industry, the parent corporation made the decision to divest the nearly 60 year old company to a private equity group whom after a 6 month transition brought in their own management team. Relieved of my responsibilities, I had mixed emotions, but for the first time in several years I felt a sense of relief, as though a huge burden had suddenly been lifted.

 It had been a tumultuous past 5 years dealing with declining vehicle volumes, customer price concession demands, rising raw material costs, and the inevitable plant consolidations, and employee lay-offs that followed. I became as deeply troubled as the industry I was attempting to serve. Now, suddenly I found myself spared from all of this, and I took great satisfaction in my new found freedom.

 Retaining the right to access my old office, now remotely removed from the gleaming new company headquarters located 2 hours away, I found myself out of habit still rising early, and going into the office every morning. There I would spend 8 hours dutifully awaiting the calls for assistance that never came. Old habits die hard deaths, however, as the weeks wore on, and spring turned to summer I began spending less and less time at the office and more time at home where with my wife, we took delight in planting flowers, and working in our yard. All summer long our yard was admired by envious neighbors who could only imagine how we now suddenly found the time to focus all of our energies to the art of horticulture.

Estranged from my workday mistress that I had courted for 30 years, I now found the time to relax with my spouse, and enjoy the more frequent quiet moments we were able to spend together. We even managed to steal away for 3 weeks traveling through the western United States, and visiting with friends we hadn’t seen for several years. However, as our idyllic summer slipped away, and frost touched our once colorful flower beds turning them into dreary patches of brown, I couldn't help, but feel envious of the early morning commuters who drove past our house on their way to work every day.

 While I began earnestly to seek new employment with a renewed sense of purpose, the prospective leads were few, and painfully slow in coming. I spent my days waiting patiently with my cell phone always within reach waiting, always waiting. Suddenly the madness of my previous existence was tempered by the reality that my idyllic summer was nearly over, and I longed to find a new mistress to embrace.