Reflections.

Before we even knew what hit us, December arrived smack between the eyes. The globe now being carbon-infested, we don't have the Nordic chill of years and decades past--it's meant to go up to 57-degrees today--but a fine mist of rain has settled on New York.

If you're an early bird like me, sometimes it seems as if you see no daylight at all. You arrive at your incessantly fluorescent workspace practically in the dark and you leave for home well into darkness, too.  It's only on weekends--and there have been too few of those--that you notice that the wind and the wet have once again done their grim-reapery and scythed just about all the leaves off of just about all the trees.

It's been a busy year for me, and I suppose a good one. While thriving in the freelance ranks, I left them for the great American illusion: security...the security of a full-time agency position. Truth be told, and for whatever reason no one prevents me from plain-speaking in this space, full-time-ness has had its ups and downs.

It's nice to have a place to hang your hat, but you can't help sometimes getting that feeling that the hook you're hanging it on is affixed to the chip-board wall with old chewing gum and spittle.

Still, and next week will mark my 31st year in the agency business, what being out on your own teaches you is absolutely invaluable. And learning what I learned during my agency interregnum has allowed me to, in the words of the great Curtis Mayfield, "keep on keeping on."

Mostly, you learn what you're good at. You learn, perhaps, what you can do and others can't or won't. You learn how to be valuable if not invaluable.

Ah.

Maybe this is the New York holiday rainy day winter's gloom talking.

In any event, if you're reading this, thank you.

Thank you for holding up under my moderate and sometimes immoderate moods.

Thank you for keeping on.