Werking @ Läst

Tuesday was my seventh day of working; that's one full week of being a real life ad guy, the first week of the rest of my life. Once the stupid work visa went through, I just dove right in... and a week later, I've been able to come up for air and think about stuff. It's a lot like school but a little different.

I've spent my week working with Max, another writer, who I know from school. We've worked on one brief for a big boring German company. But the brief is pretty wide open, so it's not too boring. We've presented to our bosses three or four times, each time whittling it down a bit. We're down to one campaign (it went from four to two to one), and now we're working executions and taglines.

Anyways, I was thinking about work vs. school, and here's what I came up with...


Some things are different:

They give us paper, pens, coffee, water, a desk, a chair, a computer, an office. We've got stock photography and art buyers and planners and a really fast internet connection. You don't really need any of that shit to have an idea, but it helps when it's time to execute.

I sit at the big boys table now. My CDs really are the gate: they decide what lives and dies. If I need them, they're there (when they're not somewhere else). We're making real ads that are really gonna run. Hopefully.

The clients are real, and they're really gonna say NO. A lot.


Some things are remarkably similar:

Phones ring, emails arrive, people chat, the mail comes, the internet beckons, and magazines catch your eye. It's always lunch time, dinner time, meeting time, time to take a break or a smoke or a pee. But if you don't take a few minutes to sit down, shut up, and focus, then concepts stagnate, ideas go unpushed, and suddenly there isn't much to show for your time. The moral of the story is, sometimes you just have to tell life to shut the fuck up so you can get some real work done.

And no one is going to do that work for you. You can ask for advice, show it to anyone and everyone, but you are responsible for your shit. End of story.

If it's just not working, you can only fight it so long. Let go. Move on.

It shouldn't matter what time you arrive in the morning, what time you leave in the evening or how long your lunch break is. But it does matter a little. People see things even when they're not watching.

It's just as chaotic and messy and unorganized. There are more people, but we still seem to be fumbling around and fucking things up all the time. Even though we're a big fancy famous agency.

Here's a brief. And here's another. And another. Have you cracked it yet? How about now? Have a good weekend. See you Saturday. And maybe Sunday.*



* It's not like this yet... but I can tell it's gonna be.