Day 62

I had lunch with Tim Werner today. Tim is one of a growing list of old friends and former co-workers that I have re-discovered with the help of LinkedIn. Years ago, when I was an ad agency producer, Tim was my editor of choice. We worked together almost every week putting together TV commercials for over three straight years. Times changed however. I stopped doing commercials. Tim moved on to editing long format video and we eventually lost touch with each other.

Although we hadn't seen each other in many years, we found that we still had experienced some of the same joys and frustrations. I find that whenever I get together with people I used to work with when I was younger, our stories typically share a common theme. We all discovered that in order to stay employable on any level, it was essential to continually reinvent yourself. We found that although we are actually working much harder than we were ten years ago, we aren't making as much money. We all moved on to greener pastures, but somewhere along the way, the grass died. Budgets are tight these days. Memories are short. And nobody is very impressed with all the awards you won in 1978.

It's definitely encouraging to see that so many of my old friends are still hanging in there and actively competing for work with people who are thirty years younger. That's certainly what I'm doing. It's a bit discouraging however, that even when you do win the bid, the work itself isn't nearly as fun as it used to be. I guess some things just can't be duplicated. We were the real life Mad Men of advertising and those days are long gone.

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