groundhoggery

The last thing I wanted to do was write a bunch of entries about my job in this blog. But if the point is to document our experiences in New York...well…this qualifies as an experience. I have to write this down so I know I’m not exaggerating when I yammer about this as an ornery old man.

I’ve been working on a pitch for about a month now. Now, for those of you who know what that means, let me just say…even for a pitch, this one’s out of control.

And for those of you who don’t know what that means, here it is in a nutshell.

A pitch means that your agency is trying to woo a big, giant company into giving you bags of money to make commercials and websites and print ads and crap that inspired someone to invent TiVo.

This usually means you work long days and a few late nights and a couple weekends to fill a room with hastily photoshopped ideas. Then the agency picks the best ideas, and parades them around the room for a bored client checking sports scores on his Blackberry. With any luck, the client will declare your agency the belle of the ball, and your agency will walk out of the pitch 100 million dollars richer.

This, however, is not how things are going right now.

I’ve worked every day of the calendar Since April 27th. That’s 26 straight days of deadlines, since my creative director has been demanding check-ins at least once a day, sometimes twice. “Need to see where you are,” the emails say. Typically, I’ve been lucky to get home at 10. Usually it’s more like 12 or 1 a.m.

Weekends are worse. It’s never a question of whether you’re going to be here…just how long. I usually end up working 16-17 straight hours, since there are no meetings to fall asleep in. I've canceled two trips in this time (one wedding in Chicago, one weekend trip to Montauk with the missus and the mutt) incurring $475 in cancellation fees (yes I'm going to expense them, but still). Crissy has taken it in stride. I've been less gracious. At first I thought I was losing my mind. Then I lost my mind. Now I’m just numb.

Now, you may be thinking, there’s just no way a person can come up with new ideas for shoes, or cars, or SQL Server 2008 R2’s for a month straight, 100 hours a week, and create anything halfway decent. Well, you’d be right. But, as it turns out, that’s why there are teams in advertising. When one zombie goes down, the other one can poke him with a stick.

Anyway, I started documenting my playoff-beard on day 22, after about a week’s worth of growth. The pitch is a week from today. Stay tuned to see if I survive till then.