Mind on Fire

Building up and burning down

Andy Spears
5 min readSep 18, 2023
Photo by Marc Renken on Unsplash

Alex sat at a large desk carved of cherry wood. On a coaster to the right of him sat a beautiful glass. He’d just gotten up to place three cubes of ice inside it. Then, he poured his favorite mixing bourbon into the glass, topped that off with Coke, and then added a splash of bourbon for good measure.

He sent her a text — a picture of the view of the city from his office. Alex had been attempting to entice Emily to visit him there for about a month now. Actually, she first mentioned the idea. He had a new position which came with a beautiful office. He would run his “empire” from there. A certain group of people who wanted things done eventually found their way to him.

His power and position had been a picture she painted for him. Yes, two years before, she’d told him what could be — what she saw inside of him. It was actually just a few days after she’d mapped it all out, made him see, that she left him. You see, she knew. She knew what he could be, that he could have what he wanted. But, she also knew that if things stayed the way they were, he wouldn’t. He would simply focus on her and on ways to make her happy. He didn’t believe that what she wanted most was for him to be his best.

He didn’t believe that because no one had really been that for him — his cheerleader, his supporter, his…

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Andy Spears
Andy Spears

Written by Andy Spears

Writer and policy advocate living in Nashville, TN —Public Policy Ph.D. — writes on education policy, consumer affairs, and more . . .

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