Hello, morning.

For many people today, the first day of Winter, is the last working day of the year.

The day in New York City at least, dawned dark. We are being lashed by yet another giant storm system. The rain, though on-again, off-again is hard. The winds are gusting up to 40 miles per hour. There isn't a rubbish bin in sight that isn't blooming with cheap broken umbrellas, the kind you buy for five dollars from toothy Nigerians on street corners.

It's supposed to get colder later and maybe some of the rain will turn to snow, or ice.

In all, it's a gloomy day.

And because many clients are gone for the year and many businesses are closed already, the city has a weird and empty feel to it. It seems a lot of people have had it with 2012 and are, I presume euphemistically, "working from home" for the duration.

I however am not.

Over the past three or four months or so, I have been "discovered" by my agency. Discovered at the age of 55.

Suddenly, every time there is a pitch or a crisis (they're usually one and the same) I get an email asking me to help.

Since August I have been on six pitches, four crises, and have shot three commercials and two high-profile videos.

Some of those pitches have come into fruition. As a consequence, I am in pre-production on six commercials we'll be shooting in LA, week of Jan. 7.

It's dark in my office now.

It's 8:30 and I will be the only one in for probably two hours or three.

Like I said, it's a good day to 'phone it in.'

The usual politics--the kind that generates second and third guessings, the kind that kills good ideas for safe ideas, the kind that sends three producers and three art directors to a single TV shoot--haven't started yet.

It's too early for stupid.

It's quiet here.

Dark.

And no one is in yet.