What if …

Have you ever wondered what you’d be doing if you’d chosen a different path? I never have in the past, but I do think about it occasionally now.

For me it was easy. I was about 12 years old when I decided I wanted to work in advertising. Originally I wanted to be an art director and I did go to art school after high school. My mother wasn’t surprised because she used to say I was always doodling, that I didn’t have a notebook or school book that didn’t have sketches in it.

When I graduated from art school my first interview was

The good old days …

Just looking at this photo has brought back all kinds of great memories. It was back in the 90’s — ’93 I’m thinking — and I was at an Ogilvy worldwide creative directors’ meeting. Jim, who’s  in the shot with me, was the creative director in our LA office.

He and I had met a year or two earlier, in New York, at David Ogilvy’s 80th birthday bash. Which is a whole other story. We (Jim and I) got along like a house on fire and we became fast

The perfect spot …

The other day Michelle (The Green Study), a blogger I follow, wrote about her quest to find the perfect place to write; and then asked us, her fellow bloggers, to share how we “create space and time to work.”

When I reviewed my rather long-winded (sorry, Michelle) comment I thought, to myself, “This isn’t a comment, it’s a blog post.” So I decided to keep Michelle’s idea going by sharing what works best for me; and hopefully you’ll be inspired to do the same.  Here goes:

I am one of the lucky ones. A career as an ad agency writer/creative director has

Will the real (name) please stand up?

Who do you see when you look in the mirror?  No, I’m not trying to be a smart ass; and it’s not a trick question.  I’m being serious.  Because it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s your own true self you’re staring at.  In my experience, at one time or another, we’ve all created a persona we’ve sent out there into the world.

Sometimes it’s who, or what, others — like our parents or spouses or teachers — want us to be.  How many young men and women have become doctors or lawyers or firefighters or teachers or have gotten married or had children in an effort to please their folks — only to end up miserable because they wanted to do something else with their lives?

Sometimes it’s us.  We wish we were like a character we enjoyed in a book or a film.  Or more like a friend or colleague.  Someone we think is more interesting or more intelligent or more successful or more admired or more charming or more memorable.  Someone who seems to have a more exciting, more fulfilling life.  Someone who’s braver than we are.  More daring.  More adventurous.  Naughtier.  Funnier.  More

Don’t take it personally …

I’ve been surrounded by creative people all my life, and I am one, myself.  And I’ve never known one, including me, who isn’t sensitive and easily hurt.  Guess it comes with the territory.  We do lay our souls bare for everyone to see, after all.  And stomp all over.  Who wouldn’t be insecure?  So needless to say, today’s Daily Post resonated with me:

“Tell us about the harshest, most difficult to hear — but accurate — criticism you’ve ever gotten.  Does it still apply?”

Of course this could be taken any one of a number of ways.  The way you dress, the colour of your hair, your weight, your cooking skills, your breath, your driving, whatever.  But seeing as how we’re all here to share our creativity — be it writing or photography or art or baking or crafting — I thought I’d talk about how it feels when people criticize our work.

Having worked in the advertising industry as a writer/creative director for more years than I care to think about, I am VERY familiar with criticism.  While it sometimes feels like you’ve been slapped in the face, I have

Day 276. Gimme Five!!

Yesterday’s WordPress Daily Prompt really caught my eye.  The theme?  “Success”.  “Tell us about a time where everything you’d hoped would happen actually did.” Well, I thought to myself.  This one has my name on it.  

One of my earliest memories of myself is when I was about four years old.  I’d been a flower girl at my great uncle’s wedding.  My dress was ankle-length, pale pink tulle and it had tiny pink silk roses randomly tacked on the skirt every here and there.  A true fairy princess gown.  Needless to say I wanted to wear it every day.  I even wanted to sleep in it.

I loved looking at the wedding photos.  My favourite, obviously, was one of me, walking down the aisle.  It was in black and white.  I am probably the originator of  the hand-tinted photo craze.  Because much to my mother’s dismay she walked in on me one morning, colouring over the photograph.

“What are you doing, Fransi?” she yelled.  “My dress is pink”, was my answer.  Really, could you argue with that logic?

From that day, I always had crayons or pencils or pastels or a paint brush in my hand.  I went through reams and reams of paper.  My mother used to tell me, even as I got older and went to school, every text book and every note pad and work book