“I’m fine,” I reply, though it’s more of a grunt than an actual sentence.
“It’s just when I brought up the merger, I thought you looked a little pale—”
“I said I’m fine,” I snap back more firmly—probably convincing Eric more than ever that everything is not as fine as I claim.
Still, Eric knows me better than any of my other friends, and he knows when he’s not getting anywhere with a conversation.
He clears his throat, eyes just faintly worried. “Okay. Well, cool, I guess. I’ll call you again to get drinks some time. It’ll be my treat.” He winks. “It’ll have to be at happy hour and we’ll have to stick to draft beer, but it’ll be my treat.”
“You know I don’t drink beer,” I answer smartly, earning a faint smirk from Eric.
“Yeah, yeah, Donovan Dunn needs top-shelf or no shelf. I got it.” He chuckles and waves goodbye before vanishing back into the bar.
The door slowly glides shut after him, leaving me alone on the sidewalk.
I glance over toward the line of people waiting outside the bar, their eyes eagerly on me. They’re hoping my departure means they’ll finally be let inside. Too bad for them, I know Club Thorn only lets in a select few people who show up without reservations. For most of those waiting, they’ll be stuck trying again another day.
With a quiet sigh that’s stolen by the evening breeze, I turn and make my way down the street. I could’ve called my car service, I suppose, as it’s quite a walk back toward my office, but I enjoy these quiet strolls.
At night it’s especially relaxing, with the skyscrapers glittering as they rise up toward the starry sky, their windows intermittently lit by hard workers toiling away into the evening. In a few minutes I’ll be joining them—my own window on the top floor of my building lit as well. Though it won’t be for Dunn Advertising that I’ll be slaving away.
Dunn Advertising had been a venture of mine for ages—ever since I was a freshman in college, actually. I started it as a side gig, hoping that I’d make enough helping small businesses that other coeds were starting to cover my tuition. To my surprise, Dunn Advertising simply exploded with popularity. I was, by all claims, a marketing natural. By the time I graduated I was already solidly renowned in the advertising world. Most of my clients now are high profile, billion-dollar businesses, but I’ll never forget what it was like to help the smaller corporations just trying to get off the ground.
As much success as I’ve had, I still don’t feel quite complete. There are still other things that I want to do—that I need to do. And I always try to give back.
In the early days, while building my name for my advertising company, I helped so many business owners get word of their companies out and increase their sales and customers. Sometimes they couldn’t pay me very much, but it wasn’t always about the money. Seeing the delight on their faces when customers began surging through their doors was enough.
Even once I was making the big bucks and clients shifted gradually from smaller businesses to elite ones, there was still that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I could always be doing more.
I explored that compulsion to give back in various ways, but my newest and most daunting project came about when I started my own nonprofit.
I’ve never done anything like this before and sometimes I feel out of my depth, but I’m determined. I know in my core, in my soul even, that I have to make this nonprofit a success.
That’s why it’s so painful for me to admit that, for the very first time, I’m failing.
My nonprofit, which helps provide clean drinking water to impoverished countries around the world, is going under.
For months now, we’ve been sinking further and further into the red. Even with the support of my personal bank account, which has been draining my own funds, it still isn’t enough to turn things around. If things keep going like this, I’m going to have to shut the nonprofit down or stand to lose everything I’ve built.
It could even cost me Dunn Advertising.
But how am I supposed to make that choice?
How am I supposed to withdraw my support of underdeveloped towns who now depend on my nonprofit for their drinking water?
It’s not as if I’m providing them an extravagant luxury or something they could do without. This directly affects their health and wellbeing.
I’ve tried everything that I can think of to keep the nonprofit afloat but no matter how hard I try, it seems to just hemorrhage finances. I have to pay for the construction of pipelines and for the people who work them and for the facilities that test and treat the water, not to mention the red tape that comes with it.
I am more than happy to do this, but it’s just become too much of a financial strain and the nonprofit isn’t receiving enough funds to cover everything.
My failure has become so obvious that my investors are beginning to pull out one-by-one, not wanting to be the last one stuck on the sinking ship. Every time I try to get more people to jump onto my board of investors, it seems to scare two more away. At this rate, I’ll have pleaded with everyone in New York for their spare change and still come up severely under budget.
I don’t know how to fix this. It’s been plaguing me for months that I can’t seem to come up with a solution or a marketing strategy that will appeal enough to investors. This nonprofit means absolutely everything to me. It’s more than a dream. It feels like it’s part of my soul, but I don’t know how to keep it going anymore.
There has only been one other time in my life that I’ve failed, and the memory of that still haunts me. I will not allow this nonprofit to follow that same path.
I think that may be the hardest part of this.
I’m not used to admitting that I’m uncertain. It’s been surprisingly easy to run Dunn Advertising. Even though I had to put in an intense amount of effort in at the beginning stages of the corporation’s life, it all happened relatively easy. People seem to trust me—because of my dashing looks and endearing charm, I presume—and so it was easy to get investors and clients for the advertising biz. It was surprisingly easy to climb to a mountain of riches and become wealthy, too. But I knew it was time to give back. And that’s what my nonprofit was supposed to do.
Maybe the fact that everything usually comes easily to me causes me to look for more fulfillment elsewhere. I thought I’d found it helping these countries secure a basic life necessity. But now that I am facing failure, I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know how to plan for a future where I’m not infallible.
How will I meet the eyes of my own reflection ever again knowing that I failed so many people? Will I try to build another nonprofit? Should I? Would others come to depend on me only to lose everything if I fail again?
There are so many questions and doubts inside my heart that it seems as though gravity has grown suddenly stronger, like it’s doing its best to suck me down against the pavement where I’ll lay unmoving for the rest of time.
Somehow, I manage to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Thoughts still churning, I come to a slow stop in front of a towering building and tip my head up to gaze at it. Dunn Advertising is emblazoned in bold red letters across the front of the building, announcing to everyone who passes by the identity of who owns the skyscraper and whose office sits at the very top. The first time I saw those letters up there, I thought my heart would burst right out of my chest with joy.