Fellow Advertising Agents:

My world came tumbling down last week. Brett, my 16 year old son, offering up a cryptic summary of his day at school, announce with what I felt was malicious non-chalance, that there was no such thing as centrifugal force. This, to me, was news of the utmost gravity. I immediately began moving through the seven stages, beginning with denial, then anger. Now that I’ve had some time to process this devastating shift in my reality, I’m still a little unclear about just what it is, if not centrifugal force, that keeps the water in the momentarily upside down bucket. Could it be, as my son claims his physics teacher claims, just plain old inertia? I, for one, am unmoved by inertia.

Is anyone else out there already totally, had-it-up-to-here sick of all the millenium hype? I was hoping to get excited about it. Now I just want to get it over with.

As I begin my fifth year free from the shackles responsibilities of full-time employment, I pause to reflect. Am I really happy flitting from flower to flower in Chicago’s meadow of ad agencies? Wouldn’t I rather circle three times and plop myself down for the duration? (My New Year’s resolution is to embrace mixed metaphors.) Should I trade my first row, center seat view of the gaping void for that insidiously intoxicating illusion of security?

Well, to begin with, I haven’t been flitting much. Extended stays at a couple of agencies have dominated my time. I yearn to flit more. So I take on what I call “second shift” projects from time to time, mostly for the thrill of climbing new learning curves. Interestingly, the evening and weekend projects work I do helps me stay fresh on assignments at whatever agency I’m currently reporting to. And vice versa.

And now a word from my sponsor. Should a project come up , for which you need a real whiz-bang writer, but you don’t require that said writer be on site all the time, that’d be me. I’m available early, lunch, late, and by phone and fax. And now back to our tome.

Okay, I’m done reflecting now. The answer is “I’m having the time of my life, doing the best thinking and writing of my career, and having more fun doing it than ever. On top of that, I get to write this impossibly self-indulgent promotional piece whenever I please, and if even one person tells me they enjoyed reading it, that’s my green light to do another.”

Stoically,

 

P.S. I don’t know about you, but my area code changed. The 3 became a 7.So did the 1. The 2, on the other hand, became a 3. It all seems so pointless somehow

P.P.S. This dang 8 point type is murder, isn’t it?

 

“Rumor is the poetry of truth.” - Vladimir Nabokov

“There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.” - Christopher Morley

“Everything is possible where ignorance is complete.” - George Santayana

The entire biomass living on the surface of the earth weighs less than all the bacteria living in solid rock within the earth. And that includes manatees, narwhals and, of course, hippos.

“They didn’t want it good, they wanted it Wednesday.”- Robert Heinlein