New Farm, New Dirt to Scratch

And so it goes...the time has come for me to pick it up and move it on downtown. After two years at (unnamed ad agency), I'm making my move to something a lot less corporate. A lot more stressful perhaps since I won't be the smartest guy in the room there, but a lot more fun. I'm not suggesting I was the smartest guy in the room, just the most unchallenged.

The raise I was due over a year ago came too little, too late and the creative energy began dwindling before that. It happens. I'm not ready to approach the statement that I know how to run an ad agency, but I am learning what doesn't work. Fear. Fear wreaks havoc on creative people and the ideas.

CLIENT: "Oh, we can't do that. That'll seem like kids chase baseball players around because players won't sign autographs. Can the players run with the kids?"

AGENCY: "But it's a game of chase. You've liked it for three months."

Yes, I'm leaving at a good time. Not only do I hope that my new CD will put a bullet in ideas that can't be gutted by spineless clients, but I'm even more hopeful that he will see spinelessness before it starts thereby protecting months of work and heart and sweat from being for nothing.

They say it's the same room of whipped copywriters and art directors in hell as in heaven, but in heaven the work gets produced.

Moving on.

I decided to take a week between jobs to do who knows what. Should I go somewhere and soak my feet in lemon juice? Or should I maybe look for a new apartment and move myself back into civilization? Bay Ridge, Brooklyn is not fun, nor cultured, nor the New York City I meant to move to.

New Job, new apartment is what I say.

More on this later.

The reason I'm so hot to move is The Crazy Neighbor. So there's this guy who lives on the other side of my wall, the wall that's closest to my head when I sleep. He DJs to the world. Really, he has a microphone and a stereo and I assume, some type of fader. He likes to do this at 3am or maybe as early as 1am. When you ask this Crazy if he'll turn it off, he screams something about cutting up your face or using the N word and runs back and forth across the street screaming about needing some respect.

Plus I do not dig Bay Ridge.

New Podcast thumbs up for Ira Glass and This American Life. It's the public radio show gone podcast and it's a perfect listen with three segments giving you a short train ride listen to a longer train ride to the longest train ride. Plus it's just so neat.

Starting a carb-less life. It's hard and I'm wondering if it's worth it.