Yes, Indeed. I'm Walking.

GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company is more than just me. GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company is also the books I read and the thinking, the information, the ideas and the inspiration I get from them.

The single TV in my small assemblage of sticks and bricks on the Gingham Coast has more and more fallen out of use. I rarely watch anything--since anything I watch seems increasingly insulting or barbarous or just plain dumb. 

Though many people tell me about this series or that, and though the men I meet with in the evenings so our dogs can play tell me about slow horses and fast women, I've never watched a single minute of Netflix, or Hulu, or Paramount, or Apple TV. It's all too much work for me and I have too little time.

I find the world of reading much richer.  

(BTW, when I bring up what's been called "the greatest narrative film ever made, Werner Fassbinder's "Berlin Alexanderplatz," I get nothing but blank looks back. I'll watch what I like. You do the same. And please don't judge me.)

I've always been a reader, but Owen, my wise therapist of almost half-a-century has pushed me deeper into the literary abyss. He started calling my nightly two hours of reading "My restorative niche." I like that, and I hold both the place and the practice as sacrosanct. That is, I scarcely ever miss an evening.

To friends, I call my reading "spending an hour or two with a genius." And even when I read books that are over my head--about one-book-in-three baffles me, I gain value from the very act of reading. 

The other day while on vacation, I stumbled on a neat little bit of Latin, "Solvitur Ambulando." It means, simply, "it is solved by walking," and the fifty or so miles a week I walk along the Connecticut coast, either with Sparks, my one-year-old golden retriever, or solo, help me immensely.

Over the past week, I've gotten a dozen inscrutable emails from a new client. They remind me a bit of notes smuggled out of solitary confinement, written in a minuscule hand on the tiniest scraps of paper. 

To be blunt, I can barely make sense of what my client is trying to say other than, "I need you, George."

I think a lot of people in advertising spend their entire careers not feeling needed by clients. It's a pretty potent feeling when it happens. And it's a lot of pressure.

Remember when agencies were needed? When they were vital to success--which was their purpose, not what it's been replaced by, "always-on content."

My account director, H, was cavalier about these notes. "You'll figure them out, G," she blithed. "You always do."

But, as I also always do, I had my doubts. 

So I threw on an old pair of sneakers, left Sparks sleeping on an expensive sofa, and went out for my second seaside walk of the morning. 

Within the first hundred yards, I started thinking about the old "Supply and Demand" graphs I studied in Econ 101 in that great old textbook I learnt from in the early 1970s. What if, I asked myself, I told their story how Stephen Rattner, the thief and founder of the Quadrangle Group, tells stories in "The New York Times"? What if I told my client's story--their purpose, their solution, their value, not in prose, but in charts?

--

I wondered as I wandered, and before another hundred yards went by, I had drawn in my head two more charts. By the end of half a mile I had an idea, a title, a headline, and five more charts.

When I got home after my 2.2 miles I went right to my office which is girded with books. I found the economics textbook I was looking for. Written by Princetonians Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. 

 

Then I sat down in my second favorite seat and typed out my headlines and the twelve charts I derived while I was out walking.

 

When I was finished, before the pixels were even dry, I sent my document to H. Among H's many talents is her machete-cutdowns of bullshit and ability to take a blowtorch to confusion. Within minutes, H sent me this:

Sometimes the most-important help you can get from a work colleague is a small affirmation that you're not off your rocker. That an idea--even a wisp of one--is worth pursuing, even if it's a little strange.

I suppose there's a lot in this post for a Friday post where I usually try to layoff the deep-dish stuff because I'm tired and my readers are, too. But this all really happened. Just now. Just as I wrote it here.

And that's that.

 

Besides, I'm too tired to go out for another walk.