Dust to Dust.

Damn.

I've been busy of late.

Almost too busy to feel the myriad aches and pains that come from being old as dirt. And walking sixty miles a week.

So, while I try to write a couple of blogposts on the weekend so I have "content" for the week's upcoming posts, here it is Tuesday afternoon, and I have nothing for tomorrow. Which sends the worst fear--the fear of failure--coursing through my veins.

As I've said many times before, when you write a blog every day, or scout for talent, or play the ponies, you're always on the look-out for the next thing that will fit the bill. 

Same when you're dedicated to a client. Reading about their business and their industry and their competitive set is a part of your job.

We lost that in advertising when we went from AOR to whatever we are today. To be really good at something means you're not a dilettante.  You work at it, always. You're on, always. You're like a military commander. You might have a battle plan, but you always searching for a weakness. Your own or your enemy's.

Me? When it comes to blogging,

I'm always looking for a topic. 
I'm always looking for a hook.
I'm always looking for a joke.
I'm always looking for something to write about.

Maybe Marcus Aurelius said, "If you wish to find a lot, seek a lot." If he didn't say that, he might have, so I'll pretend he did by translating those words into algorithmic Latin: "Si multum vis invenire, multum quaere."

There's a lot of blather in every industry that seems to work to make things unclear and therefore complicated. The idea behind complication is "You have to buy us, because the blank business is hard, and only we can figure it out."

That's why you get bushwa like this:

But ninety-nine percent of advertising, and most everything else, isn't really judge by the blather above. In fact, we'd all be better served if agencies somewhat quoted Art Blakely. "We do work that washes away the dust of everyday life."

I've been scribbling back and forth with a friend of mine from the business. We've been comparing scars from the business most of which derive from people who think that showing a trace of humanity is somehow a sign of weakness.

I wrote to him just now,

They’ve intellectualized themselves out of humanity.™

With no humanity, the dust of everyday life collects and concretizes. It tries to put laughter into a spreadsheet and marketing into an if-then proposition.

I don't watch a lot of TV. About two hours total a week.

And I have every ad blocker in the universe activated to try to keep from being stalked and restalked, targeted and retargeted and always on-assaulted by people who want my money and want to give me nothing in return.

My joke about NBC's coverage of the Olympics, which I watched a bit of this weekend, is "it's a shame they had to interrupt all those pharma commercials with a swim meet." But when I do see something on the air, 99-percent of the time I construct the powerpoint checklist of all the hoops that were leapt through and all the bullet points that were screamed before someone in a suit one-size too small said something like, "that will be an effective piece of marketing communication because it hits on bullet points seven through 23, including codicil six b of the aforementioned appendix to page 57 of the brief.

Golf claps.

What I never see when I turn on whatever tube I spend too much time on, is humanity.

Truth.

Empathy.

Wit.

Love.

About 99-percent of what we do passes quality-control and meets the boredom-distribution dispersion disbursement.

About 0-percent passes humanity-control.

We're accumulating too much dust from everyday life.