in the middle of it is right

It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do after college. I wasn't one of those go-to-graduate-school,go-to-law-school,go-to-med.-school, work-for-daddy, get-married, kind of post graduates--all sure of myself with my future mapped out neat and pretty. Nope. I felt like everybody had gotten the big book of life in the mail, but me and I was a confused, aimless and utterly terrified. I waitressed (I had the personality for it, just not the organizational skills), I took a six week course at Katherine Gibbs (you were supposed to bring an extra pair of pantyhose with you everyday--can you imagine?) to learn to type (a skill that would have proven exceedingly useful during journalism school), I had loads of "informational interviews" with well-meaning, bored executives, and the rest of the time I alternated between feeling like a like the "L" on my forehead was neon, and like maybe finding the perfect career was overrated. But then I met a guy and he had a job and I liked his job and I thought I could do his job and he thought the same thing and pretty soon, bingo, with a lot of encouragement from the boyfriend, I took a couple classes, put a portfolio together, had a week of interviews and found myself a career. A career that was pretty great (although not brain surgery, fire fighting or working on a cure for cancer), but nonetheless helping the world of commerce to run by creating advertising that would sell products for a myriad of different clients.

And pretty soon, I found i loved advertising like a new boyfriend. I mean, I was just nuts about it.

Ok, so maybe it's shallow, but who wouldn't love showing up at an office, working with a partner (an art director, and generally pretty cool person) in an office, sitting on the floor, standing on your head, eating, smoking, screaming, singing and trading intimate details of your lives in an effort to come up with an original idea that would break through the nine bazillion pieces of communication out there. I mean, you are hired because they want you to think crazy. Sometimes I felt like getting paid was just icing. I made some really great friends who were and are important pieces of my history. I laughed so hard some days, i thought my face would break. I mean, I grew up in ad agencies. With people who were artists, and comedians, and some who just liked the idea of never having to bow to convention. I liked the whole thing. The not having to wear corporate clothes, the silly products, the work sessions at funky lunch spots, the great offices. It fit me. And I miss that part of it a lot. But it's not something I could ever go back to because it's a moment that's passed. It couldn't ever be the same again, which makes me sad and forces me to have to get real with finding something else that will stir me up as much as being a copywriter did when I was younger. What sucks about this is that just when you're in the middle of your life and some careers are just starting to value you for your experience, advertising does the exact opposite. See, advertising is just like society--youth obsessed. Agencie like the young and hip, not the old and hipp-y. It's all about working late, hanging out with your co-workers (so you're really working even when you're not) and traveling. It's not a great job for anyone who want to be a mom, say or a really involved dad, say, or for anyone who is planning on getting old. Because you can be a lot of things in advertising, but old isn't one of them.

I am old-ish, by advertising standards in particular, but I'm still working, albeit in a totally different way. I have my own small clients and I like them and do nice work for them and that's all just fine. I mean, I would probably never work in an agency environment again, because my interest and priorities have changed since I used to do that, but I do miss it, or anyway, I think what I really miss is just being so crazy excited everyday to go to work. Which I totally used to be.
I think it would be great to take my writing skills and throw them at something else, you know, getting some credit there for my experience. But I'm grappling with where, how, when? I search, I talk, I try on different things, but can't quite figure out something to do with my skills that will complement them or provide the adrenaline, which advertising provided for the majority of my working life.

Which means, I feel a little like I just got out of college again.

joining in

Like my mom used to say, "if johnny jumped off the roof, does that mean you have to, too?" Well, that's kind of a little bit how I feel about blogging. Everybody's doing it and so am I just following, like is it just the price of admission these days? Or is it that it's something so wildly unimaginable back in the day, that you could send your writing out into the wild blue yonder of cyberspace (which wasn't even a twinkle in much of anybody's eye when I was a kid) and have someone comment on it from like, a tree farm in Australia, someone who you would never, prior to the internet, have had any contact with? I mean, don't you sort of HAVE TO take advantage of that. I mean, isn't it another way to reduce the size of our giant world and connect to people in a whole different way than we've ever been able to do before?

Having been an advertising copywriter for more than 20 years, having a journalism degree, and having taken dozens of short story classes over the years, at the very least, maybe I can put some writing down everyday and save it. For me. As a practice. And maybe as more, if anything comes out of me that actually makes any sort of sense. The thing that's always prevented me from trying to be a professional fiction writer or essayist is just this one little thing: you actually have to write. All the time. And keep doing it everyday. And then again the next day. And the day after that. Even when you have other things to do, or you have snot running down your nose, or snot running down your kid's nose, or epic infertility, or a horrific work assignment which you'd rather have all your teeth pulled than do, or you have a migraine that feels like little your eyes might pop out of your head, or you have a death in the family, or a fight with your husband (which I definitely do on occassion), or your best friend (which I never do), or you're producing the play at your kid's school for 160 kids, or you're trying to figure out what to do with the rest of your life (again), or you have to drive one kids East and the other kid West, or you know, whatever stuff you have that eats up your time and prevents you from doing what you're supposed to be doing. You just have to keep writing as a priority, despite whatever the heck else is going on with you. And that's always been an obstacle for me. So, maybe blogging will help that. Maybe it will magically force my fingers into submission and some words onto the screen.

It's interesting to put yourself out there for anybody to mistakenly bump into. I've read some blogs which are so highly personal that it's almost embarrassing (and even more embarrassing is when you see someone who's blog you frequent and know everything about their lives without them knowing you know everything about their lives). I am known for my candor and out-there-ness, but I mean, you do have to walk down the street, show your face at your kid's school and ball games, now don't you? I'm not being presumptuous that much of anybody will be reading this if I don't announce I'm doing it, but I mean, I guess you have to decide how much of yourself you're comfortable with uncovering.

So, there. My first post. I did it. Looks like Johnny got to me, mom.
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