they should hire a muse.

i touched down in the office today swearing upside down not to fart away my hours skiving.
even if it is sunday.
and i resent working on other people's holy day. gotta respect other gods.

but come on, it's me. tsk! fine, but the rock-wall's waiting, hurry up!!





so here's the thing.

life's too short to waste on whining about short straws, scheming about ancient history.
man up - there's one lesson learnt.

in the advertising world, it sucks like a gaylang whore to be mediocre.

really, there are long exhaustive nights, bitchfits tucked behind every cubicle wall looking for a face to throw itself at, straws lining up in bales to break every camel's back. there're supplier entanglements, production problems to sort through...*

(for example: why won't the video fade away evenly?

and to print colour on black, you have to print white on black first or the colour won't show, then the red over it, then a gloss to protect the red. but wait, in the end the red won't show up well. oh shits in the pits.

well, m, you should've figured that out with your god-awesome intuition or something. lord knows, you're bearing the consequences.)

colour-separation issues, high turn-over rates that scatter all the working files, quotes, notes, vector logos, illustration styles everywhere. and everywhere can be hard copies in some 2nd cupboard on your right, and straight on til morning, or soft copies in one of 5 thumbdrives or hhds, on the broken server, in the laptop that died, the laptop passed on to the creatives, or in a long-dead email account not accessible unless you annoy you niang niang with 5 requests for 5 admin keys.*or other yawnable dramas like that.

and at the end of this long, long, long day, that one last hill you didn't quite surmount may break your lau ban's back and launch his bitch fit in your face. this one last hill could be a dog-ear on a internal document that got circulated one too many times, or him not having his newspapers waiting for him. ok, not everywhere's like this, ok? chill, young padawans.

so we've established that there are many omg-so-petty low moments right? see, this is why it sucks to be mediocre. the only high everyone in the agency is likely to get is the light bulb moment when you sight an inspired concept coming home on the horizon, and you start bouncing one kickass idea after another off each other. it is the best thing ever, better than jesus, red nails, sugar coated babies, roman holidays or getting As in school. and that is why scores and scores of ad-folks offer these up in penience to the Ad Gods. well, that and the booze. sorry, not always free in le petite agencies.

so if we have no thunderstruck moments, all the lows we ride through seem like A Very Dumb Idea.

you need massive amounts of drive to pull yourself out of this rut of saying "well, guess this much is enough". so no matter how weird/lazy/potty/scatter-brained/lewd/demanding/ego-centric your creatives seem sometimes, if they supply you with these awesome moments, cut them some slack. not all creatives are actually that creative, you know. i know.

the lesson learnt here is to always avoid mediocrity in yourself. and to haul myself out of average land, it pays to find some giants to learn from. standing on the shoulders of giants, is the favourite way of saying it in corporate marketing! reverse osmosis, you know!

i'd be newater yet.

(*skip whining in tiny font. it's just some yawnable drama. now look, i told you so right!)