Day 289: excited about... work?

Yes this is me talking, and I know it sounds insane, but today I got truly, genuinely excited about my job. Working in advertising for me has always been a bit of a tug of war. It's a creative industry so that's good, but a lot of the time you're working on churn and burn bullcrap that doesn't make the world a better place. I guess I've mainly viewed my job as a good option for a creative person while one works on other creative projects designed to one day catapult you out of the industry. But today I think I had a little epiphany. A new guy has started at our place - the head of planning. Planners are usually a very smart and interesting bunch. This guy is all that but cool too (he wears the best threads), and inspiring. Now if you've been in advertising a while, you will necessarily have sat through your fair share of seriously bullshitty inspiring speeches. Whether it's the new agency direction, the new Creative Director, or just an attempt at bolstering morale, at various points in time people will get up and talk at you in an impassioned fervour, usually spouting a string of the latest buzzwords from the industry magazines. Sometimes it does actually gee you up for a while, sometimes it's just depressing. But this guy didn't sound like a bullshitter. He felt like the real deal. Whether this is true or not, his little speech (notable because it wasn't full of buzzwords and was full of understated coolness, as opposed to uncool, bawdy posturing, which you get a lot of in advertising agencies) triggered something in me. I had an idea. It might be an idea that comes to nothing, but it's one I want to pursue. It was an idea that could see my work actually become a true creative outlet. You see, if I'm really honest, all these years I've been focusing my creative powers on finding ways to get out of advertising. Maybe what I should have been doing is working out ways I could really get in to it. I've always wanted to be someone truly inspired by my work. Maybe instead of waiting for my work to inspire me, what I really needed to do was take my inspiration to the work. I'm sure this latest revelation of mine is something other advertisers have probably known all along (the ones who love their jobs that is). Oh well, never mind. Better late than never.