Tarnished-Lining Notebooks.

Though I try with every new assignment, every new project, and in the past tried with every new year or new agency, I've never been able to keep a notebook. 

I've seen friends--even my wife--who keep a MLO (Moleskine Like Object) and assiduously write down the major events of every meeting they attend. They date things. Some people even keep these notebooks. They collect them over time and store them in file cabinets or bookshelves. I don't need to search for more reasons to flagellate myself. But my inability to take neat notes is up there. 

(BTW, years ago I read "The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti: IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World's First Desktop Computer." From that book, I read about these notebooks and have been buying them ever since.)

Despite swearing to myself to take serious notes, about thirty minutes in to most meetings, my mind starts wandering. Sometimes I'll start writing headlines. But more often, I'll sketch little pictures of people in the meeting. (My drawing skills haven't advanced since I was about 14.) As time goes by, I'll doodle. I'll draw sports cars or boats or city skylines. Or interlocking geometric shapes.

That said, I often write a note to myself, something I've heard that sounds "headline-able," profound, or even, thematic and platformic. 

When I get to one of those statements, no matter how long the meeting I'm in is due to last, essentially, I'm done with the meeting. I know what needs to be said. I know my brief. Now I have to a) convince others of what I've heard. And b) write something that explains it. A spot. A manifesto. Or one-hundred headlines.

Because I have a frightening memory, I don't usually need a notebook to refer to. When I find one of these answers, they're pretty high in volume. They get my attention. They seem like barnacles to me. They latch onto whatever lobe will take them and I can't shake them away. I virtually never lose them. 

I don't know how many people reading this have this malady. There are ads I've had from 40 or 50 years ago that I didn't nail. I remember those ads, and I'm still working on them during my fallow moments.

With all that as background, I am enduring the slow process of un-over-stuffing my over-stuffed New York City apartment. Just now, I found three spiral bound Muji notebooks on the floor alongside an expanse of filled to the brim bookshelves. I flipped through them and they revealed my usual forensics. 

Each notebook had a serious start. Then devolved into doodles and notes to myself. Then, 127-empty-pages.

This week has been a helluva week whether you're young and have had your horizon cut short, or you're old like me and, as the Ol' Redhead might have said, "And you're rounding third and heading home."

I've felt that aged despair for a while. I guess it comes with the territory when all you really have in life is your work. I love my work. I love many of my clients and the people I'm lucky enough to work with. But, as above, I am rounding third and heading home. What do you do with your time if you don't work and don't play golf?

Maybe it was a line in one of the notebooks I just perused that got me all Wordsworth-y and thinking, dreamily, of my mortality. I saw a line in one of them. I must have been freelancing at Ogilvy, before I was hired for my second stint.

Strange things happen when you freelance. You might have been a CCO in a previous job. All of a sudden, you're rewriting people's bios for a pitch deck. You do whatever it takes to take the money they're willing to pay you. 

This obsequiousness hurts.

It's like being a Hall-of-Fame catcher and being asked to warm up the fourth reliever down in the bullpen. It's a blow to your ego. But you take it.

I think we all feel like that.

Maybe this week especially.

Anyway, back to the summary line I ran across just now in one of my one-third filled notebooks.

"When did I start reporting to all the people who used to report to me?"

There's a lot of come-uppance in life.

In fact, maybe it's accurate to say, life is come-uppance.

That doesn't make it any easier.

Come on down.