Friday reflections.

I got a slow start this morning and had an early work-related phone call, so here it is, after 10:00, and I've yet to post anything.

I'm inveterate, I am, having written nearly 4,000 posts, most of them, like Seinfeld, about nothing. I don't, like some of my similarly inveterate blogging friends, plot out my posts beforehand. I let them come according to what strikes me when it's time to write.

I don't do a lot of critiques of specific commercials. I think it's unfair, somehow. And it ignores the idea that we're each fighting our own battles, carrying our own burdens and dealing with our own clients. Of course, it's easy to make wonderfully entertaining, viral, funny and motivating commercials if you don't actually make them.

Just like it's easy to critique "Citizen Kane" or "The Bicycle Thieves," if you never have to put celluloid to paper.

Usually when I'm struggling to find an idea (as I am this morning) I can stumble upon an indignity in the workplace. Some meeting where poseurs pose and trumpeters trumpet and say nothing and do nothing but f-f-f-f-f-fulminate and breathe through their mouths harrumphing like a be-wigged barrister in an old English movie.

But I don't go to meetings now, I'm a freelancer. So I am finding no grist from the meeting mill.

What's more, and I thank the ghost of Bill Bernbach or whomever's watching over me for this, I'm working at places that are fairly roll-up-your-sleeve affairs.

The Guru-class, which as far as I'm concerned should be dropped into a specially-built giant blender placed in the center of Times' Square or Central Park, and pureed into pink slime and dumped into a nuclear landfill, is right now missing for me. The ethereal mother-fuckers who have never done anything but move up the ladder thanks to their ability to a) not offend, b) not to do work, c) say how great their work (which is never produced) will be and d) and most-importantly, kiss motherfucking ass, well, I haven't dealt with them for more than half-a-year.

Halavai.

That said, and despite the comfort of being paid an amiable freelance day-rate, there are things, of course I miss. Maybe I'm too much the old soldier who finds he misses being periodically shot at.

For now however, and thanks for asking, I am hanging in there.

No evil bankers have darkened my door and threatened to evict me or tie me to the rail-road tracks for not paying my mortgage. I've been able to keep my kids in both the latest trendy togs and their chosen educational institutions--they have not had to turn to peeling potatoes or dining in soup kitchens. I've even taken a European vacation and am looking forward to an end-of-year Caribbean one.

So I count my blessings.

And for now, put away this blog.

I have work to do.