Sometimes, after a long day at work, I feel like stroking a stone and talking to it. Not because I expect an answer, but because a stone has no deadline, no questions, no last-minute additions to an agreement, and no need to explain that what it actually meant was something entirely different.
A few evenings ago, I came to the end of one of those days that do not seem particularly dangerous in the morning. Everything began quite normally. Then one agreement changed, something that was supposed to be finished was not, something that had been finished no longer suited the person who had asked for it, and the phone rang often enough that no conversation had time to settle in my mind before the next one began.
Days like these do not have one big problem. That is precisely the point. They are made up of dozens of small things that, taken individually, are not worth getting upset about, but by evening they have added up neatly.
When you work for a company, the working day still has at least an imaginary edge. You may stay late, take a problem home, or remember in the evening a conversation you did not finish as you should have, but there comes a moment when you can tell yourself that enough is enough for today.
When the company is yours, that sentence does not carry the same weight. Not because you should work yourself to exhaustion, nor because having no private life is proof of seriousness. Quite the opposite. If everything constantly depends on you, you have probably set something up badly. Yet even when you have not, one simple fact remains: unresolved matters have a strange ability to find their way back to the owner in the end.
That evening, I put my phone on the table and turned it face down. I did not switch it off. I was not quite that optimistic.
Beside it lay a small stone. I do not even know how it got there. I picked it up and sat there for a few moments. After a whole day of conversation, it felt good to hold something that had no opinion about what should be done.
The stone had no follow-up request. It had no urgent demand. It had no four-minute voice message. It did not even have that cautious: “I know we agreed differently, but…”
It was simply there.
And perhaps it was only then that I understood that the work itself had not exhausted me that day. What exhausted me was that almost every person I had spoken to expected some answer, decision, confirmation, or solution from me.
Sometimes, a person does not grow tired from the amount of work. They grow tired from being needed by someone all day long.
That is why those few minutes with the stone felt better than I would care to admit.
It was quiet, steady, and asked for nothing.
Which, at least that evening, made it a rather serious candidate for Employee of the Month.
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