Last night, something very strange happened.

I met two friends in Chicago for dinner. The kind of dinner I would normally blow off because it came after a day that featured a 5:30 AM call time and 10 hours of filming outdoors under the opression of a 110 degree heat index.

But here’s where the strange part kicks in.  We sat for two hours, each taking turns in describing the amazing things that are happening with our careers. Josh, who got laid off from his agency account service job almost two years ago, is now on retainer with two companies doing strategic planning work. Plus he has a roster of his own clients that are growing rapidly.

Becky left her miserable job in Michigan, moved to Chicago, and is now doing agency PR for Cramer-Krasselt. Plus she’s making a killing as a freelance photographer. All of which has allowed her to pursue her passion for skydiving. (And if I know Becky, I wouldn’t doubt that THAT will be her career one day.)

Then, after telling them about the great day I had directing some commercial work Yahoo!, and talking about moving my family to Austin, it struck me that in over two hours, not one of us had bitched about our jobs. Not one of us complained about an unfair boss or a pain in the ass cubicle mate or working late hours. We were just sharing stories. Reconnecting. And appreciating this wonderful moment in our lives and careers.

We were….happy.

Well, this feels weird. So here it goes. Since you all (or y’all, depending on what side of Maryland you’re reading this) are my online buds, I’ll share some news about me since writing my first post on this blog a year ago.

Don’t Fear the Reaper, for some strange reason, remains the most read post on pleasefeedtheanimals. I honestly don’t know exactly why. At the time I was without a full-time job for the first time in my career. Yet, for some reason I still don’t understand, I was feeling was tremendously positive despite my layoff and uncertain future. I felt it was within my power to reboot my career. Still, the economy last summer was just plain awful. Like many of you, I was wondering from where my next paycheck would come. I should have been freaking out. When I sat down to write, I found the right voice. It was funny. It was upbeat. It was me. I’m humbled that so many of you have read the post and continue to do so. Thank you. Over and over again.

Since then, amongst my frequent online ramblings, I found a lot of freelance work at various agencies, and did a decent job being an independent soldier of copywriting fortune. I felt fortunate to have found work when I did. Honestly, I think a lot of it was luck. My father always told me, “you make your luck,” and I believe there’s truth to that. Even though I secretly wanted the big TV shoot with the travel and the craft services table and the wrap parties and everything that makes advertising fun, I was happy to accept under-the-radar digital assignments and direct pieces. They kept the lights on, the kids fed, the bills paid.

As fortunate as I felt to be finding steady freelance, recently, a full-time job presented itself. I thought long and hard about it. I remembered my last post about someone who turned down an offer in a weak economy. I looked at the news about the continued fickleness of a recovery that just won’t settle in. I accepted. And I’m working with good people who I want to grow with. Perhaps this is my chance to reboot, and to laugh in the face of “the reaper” who I wouldn’t let get the upper hand.

Maybe I’m just having a good year and should simply accept that with the deepest humility. Or maybe I should smugly tell the reaper to take a hike. I’ve got ads to make.

Epilogue: If the happy ending of this post turned your stomach, or made you throw up a little in our mouth, then here’s a hyperlink to agencyspy, where there’s an ample supply of snarky comments to fulfill one’s daily dose of cynicism.

Brad Mislow is a senior copywriter and just wants to please you.

Note from Erik: This guest post was originally submitted on April 23rd…which will be relevant in the next sentence.

Today, April 23rd, is my fifth wedding anniversary with the most beautiful woman who ever walked the face of the earth. But that’s a different story.

I also find myself in the same position I found myself last April — Laid off.

“We have eliminated your position” was what I was told yesterday. Difference this time is that I was totally blindsided, whereas last year’s “position elimination” was a planned event due to an office closing. As far as I can tell, this one’s a case of the old accounting principle named LIFO.

Last In First Out. At least that’s what I’ll say to make myself feel better.

One other life changing event took place yesterday morning as well. My wife and I finally put ourselves in the position to put an offer on our dream house. Our first house at the age of 38.  It only took hours to get a counter offer that would have led to our planned purchase price.  So we called our broker and now we are backing out. And we also cancelled our anniversary weekend getaway to Lenox, MA.

It feels as if the last year never happened and we’re in the same position now as we were a year ago. Uncertain, scared, mad, feeling inadequate and devastated.  Except for this time it’s flushed our home buying dreams and transition out of the city and into the burbs down the toilet….at least for now.

While I will wallow in my own despair for a bit, it’s time to draw back on the lessons I was raised on.  Hard work, honesty and perseverance…so for now I’ll feel bad, go to bed and start the next day more positive than the day before.

Next.

A very wise man (my father) once told me that “adversity introduces a man to himself.” So I will take the same pensive walk to the unemployment office in Boston that I took almost a year ago to the day, trying to embrace the experience and learn from it. But for a few reasons mentioned above this one will be different. I’ll fill out the necessary forms walking away with my packet pondering what’s next. I’d like to think what’s next will be better than what has been.

One thing I do know is that my wife and I will spend the weekend together in our Boston apartment sharing quality time with each other.  Then I’ll take that walk on Monday morning.

____________

Greg Knoff is a two-time out-of-work account guy with 13 years of experience. He can be found here on LinkedIn, or you can see what he does while out of work at gtknoff.com

I’m a sucker for meaningless milestones, and believe it or not we are experiencing one right now. Seeing that we’re approaching the summer of 2010, that means we’ve hit the 10-year-mark of the bursting of the dot com bubble.

Let’s take a trip through time, shall we?

It’s spring/summer 2000. The NASDAQ is hitting the 5,000 mark. The print (chuckle…) magazine the Industry Standard is as thick as a phone book and practically bursting with ads for start-ups – all of which are as graphically confusing as their company’s business models. AOL and Time Warner just completed the “merger of the century.” Everyone has a Motorola Star-Tac cell phone and uses them for phone calls (really!). If you worked in advertising then, you were working on at least one goofy dot com account (most likely doing traditional advertising for them, ironically) that acted as if they had more VC money than BP, pre-spill. You sat through PowerPoint presentations in their downtown offices staffed with private chefs and furnished with billiard tables, table tennis, foosball and some archaic video game from the 80s. Every presentation showed how the company was going to “change the way we _____ ______”, and was followed by a slide of future profit projections represented by an arrow, pointing ever-upward.

Didn’t exactly turn out that way, did it, class?

For us in the ad biz, 2000 was the beginning a long process of downsizing and constriction, leading up to today. Agencies began to shrink. Layoffs began. Expense and production budgets were slashed. Then came 9/11 and things got worse. The housing bubble that excited most of America didn’t reverse the downward spirial of traditional advertising agencies. Years of steady decline continued with the rise of digital media. Then came 2008, and the rest is history.

The immediate aftermath of the 2000 crash was quite a shock. First of all, our sugar daddy dot com clients disappeared. No more hanging out in hip downtown lofts. No more lavish dinners/bar tabs on the company dime. However, if you wanted a deal on used ping-pong tables or Aeron chairs, just name your price. Second, people who left advertising, finance, law, etc., for dot com glory and riches soon returned to advertising, finance, law, etc. They were somewhat humbled that they had to return to Career Path Plan A in order to make a living like normal folk. Lastly, creativity in advertising took a hit. Creatives had the run of the land in the dot com boom in 1995-2000. Don’t believe me? Look up TV spots of that era for outpost.com (hamsters shot out of a cannon), pets.com (a fucking talking sock!), the initial yahoo ads (talking dolphin, especially), the initial Etrade ads (money up the wazoo)…I could go on. The point is it was a time when outrageousness was expected and demanded. These companies needed the attention of consumers and investors alike, and you didn’t get it by being quiet or humble, so it was thought. After the burst, creativity took a hit and most companies wanted conservative messaging. The pendulum had swung. 9/11 made it worse. Then we had to be conservative and patriotic. Don’t question it, do it. We’re at Code Orange, for chrissakes.

Ten years after, here were are. Many of us are still in advertising, and to us those days of the dot com bubble are as distant as those from the Mad Men era. It’s a very different business now. Some say that’s the last time advertising was fun. They may be right.

What were you doing in advertising in 2000? What accounts were you working on? What was the most outrageous/excessive assignment you found yourself doing? When was the moment you said to yourself, “this is BS and is going to fall like a house of cards one day”?

Please comment. The time machine is on.

Brad Mislow is a freelance senior copywriter who’s worked on…oh I think you know me by now.

At more than 3M views, it’s likely you’ve seen this already. If you haven’t — and even if you have — take 15 minutes to watch it now. Or a few less minutes to read the transcript.

And be careful to avoid “yeah, but he’s Steve Jobs so reinventing is easier” thinking. I would argue it’s even harder for those who have become so public to turn themselves into something even better. Look at almost every actor who tried to become a musician, and you’ll know what I’m getting at.

Every somebody was once a nobody. Even Steve Jobs.

I didn’t understand these people. I was someone who needed to feel comfortable at work.  Pictures of my kids (never knew when I wouldn’t be home for dinner), a cushy couch (never knew when I wouldn’t be home), and a framed Chagall print on my wall gave my office a sense individuality.

But really, I was just giving myself the illusion of permanence.

It’s no coincidence that most of the white-wallers had been in the business a while. In hindsight, all of the people I’m remembering were in their 40s and had seen their share of layoffs. At the time I thought it was sad. Poor guy. He’s just expecting to lose this job.

But now, I look at it as pragmatic. Unless you work for yourself, there’s a fairly high likelihood that someone is going to call you into their office one day to tell you your services are no longer necessary. We are bolts in a machine. Workers in a factory.  Each with a finite life expectancy.

I don’t look at that as negative or doomesdayish. Quite the opposite. Having the understanding of my role in the bigger system has liberated me to find another system. That’s what I love about freelancing so much. I can visit an agency, get my hands dirty, and never expect to be treated as anything but a service for hire.

Not to mention, I’ll never have to pack another box again.

A couple months before Up In The Air was released, someone who knows someone at Paramount told me about its similarities to Lemonade.

Well, I was finally able to see UITA last night. Other than mentioning that I enjoyed it very much and think you would, too, I’m not going to give it a review here per se.

I did want to talk about its similarities to Lemonade. And mostly, how it differs.

While the movie is largely about a hired-gun axe man, they cut in clips of real-life people who lost their jobs. Overall, it’s a nice touch of reality in an otherwise glitzy Hollywood production. And that’s pretty much where the sameness ends.

The bigger thought for me was this issue of escapism vs. truth. We go to the movies largely to be entertained. People — myself included — think nothing of dropping $50 on a couple of tickets and some popcorn to get away from life for a while. And judging by box office sales for Up In The Air (about $54.5M to date), we don’t mind watching actors live out our day to day bullshit on the big screen.

That said, Ryan Bingham (Clooney’s character) transcends our day to day. He’s not our reality.  Bingham carries a Black Card, flies 300+ days a year and romps under hotel covers with mid-life hottie Vera Farmiga. There’s not much middle income white-collar connection to that.

But the people on the other side of the desk — the ones he’s paid to fire — that’s you and me. Those are the people I connect with. Theirs are the truths I want to tell. And that’s the big difference between Up In The Air and Lemonade. The former is a beautifully executed fantasy that entertains a notion of reality. The latter tries to make reality entertaining.

So I ask you, is a largely fictional film about layoffs more appealing to you than a real one? Would you rather see dashing leading men act out what it’s like to fire someone, or hear about real-life triumphs from the other side?

I know the story I want to tell. But what’s the story you want to hear?

My last full time job was located in a mall. You literally had to walk through a food court and past a couple of shoe stores to get to the elevator.

After a while, you forgot the absurdity of this fact. You’d walk by the cell phone accessories kiosk like it was a vendor on 34th St. The mall directories became street signs. It just became the backdrop for your day.

But every so often, it would strike you that you were working in a frickin’ mall.

Like during the Holidays, when the act of getting to your office turned into an episode of Gladiators.

Or, when you were working on an intense deadline that kept you there until after all the stores closed.

When you leave your office to an empty mall, it’s a stark reminder of what you’re willing to do for your job. The water fountains are turned off. You can hear the echos of your footsteps reverberating against the closed glass doors. It’s just you and the guy buffing the floor.

Companies are getting leaner and leaner and leaner. Despite winning new business, many agencies continue to lay people off. And if you’re (un)lucky enough to keep your job, chances are you have to work 2-3 times as many hours than you did just two years ago.

If you’re doing what you love for a company you believe in, then this isn’t a problem. Staying late and working weekends becomes an extension of yourself and your passion. You do so gladly because you’ve found the career you are meant for.

But if it feels like a sacrifice, and you are committing huge chunks of your life merely to hang on to something that feels disingenuous, then maybe now is the time to ask some tough questions:

1. Is this a sacrifice, or is it advancing your career goals?
2. Is it a blip, or a trend? (Look back at the last several months. Have there been more good days than bad?)
3. Think back to why you chose this job and/or career. Is it what you signed up for?
4. Is there a real chance it will get better, or is this just the next in a long history of dangled carrots?
5. Is it time to consider an exit strategy?

Sometimes, it takes a slap in the face (like getting laid off) to inspire action. That’s what happened to me.

But if I’m honest, the signs were there long before I lost my job. Walking through an empty mall at 2 AM didn’t feel satisfying. I wasn’t leaving my job at night feeling like I had kicked some ass. I was thinking more about how I had missed story time with my kids.

I wasn’t contributing to my career, I was sacrificing my life.

The new year is upon us. Now is the perfect time to be honest with yourself. If answering the above questions means you continue working your ass of to achieve great things where you are, then please, stay put. There is no reason to rock the boat that’s taking you to your desired destination.

But if not, don’t wait until losing your job forces you to do what you love. After all, why should your life’s work be the last option?

We don’t have expensive taste. Other than perhaps another bathroom (four people sharing a single bath doesn’t do much for one’s sense of privacy), we’ve got everything we need.

We don’t want millions. We want the absence of worry. Money-wise, it would just be really nice if every first of the month wasn’t a fingers-crossed-athon.

So two years ago, we sat down and wrote out a five-year financial plan. On it, were five very simple goals:

1. Zero credit card debt
2. Pay down one extra mortgage payment per year
3. Six months of living expenses in savings
4. Retirement savings on track
5. College savings for kids on track

Of course, then I lost my job and all that went to shit. Barring a sudden windfall (which is entirely possible), we’ll probably have to reset the five year meter. Getting laid off completely reversed all the progress we made in everything on this list.

But good (financial) fortune or not, our list does highlight the simplicity of how we want to live. These are manageable, modest goals. And still very feasible once we stop the bleeding.

We don’t have any desire to buy a house in Weston (said through clenched teeth) or get a subscription to Robb Report.

Nowhere on that list another car (we just have one) or a second home.

But, boy, a second toilet would sure be nice.

Before the Great Recession, the Holidays (oh, whom am I kidding) Christmas in advertising was a blast. Holiday-themed swag from vendors and clients literally littered the office. Festive tins of chocolates and tri-flavored popcorn (sticky caramel, powdery cheese and oily butter) were to be found everywhere. Holiday parties were creatively disguised as end-of-year meetings (for tax write-offs) and went from 3 p.m. to the wee hours, depending where the after-party was. If you were lucky, a creative director or account group head had an generously open bar tab courtesy of a Gold Card, for business expenses, naturally. It was the most wonderful time of the year.

Nowadays, it seems, any boxes lying around the office aren’t filled with goodies. They’re for you to put your things in as you wind down your tenure at your newly former agency. The last few Decembers have brought layoffs in advertising as well as countless other businesses.

We all know the story. It’s becoming as common as a Christmas Carol and other tales of Christmas past. The economy is in the toilet. Clients aren’t spending. Consumers aren’t spending. The big Scrooge-y holding company wants/needs/demands to make its numbers for the year. (ed. note: for the record, the writer is Jewish and has no problem mentioning Christmas by name. If you find this offensive, you may pray for his soul. Thank you.). By the end of the year, cuts must be made. Some happen on December 1. Some have happened as late as December 18. 

I know business is business, but I’m sorry. Getting the boot a week before Christmas will suck the wind out of any flying reindeer. Does anyone realize how demeaning it must feel to walk out of the office, cardboard boxes in hand, though the lobby of an office building that is chalk-full of tacky and/or elaborate Holiday decorations. One year, I heard of a company passing out pink slips on the same day a choir was belting out Yuletide songs a few floors below. Some sleigh ride that turned out to be.

Would it be any less painful to hold off until January? Probably not. However. There is some merit for that as everyone’s already depressed during the bleak January weeks, so maybe it wouldn’t feel as dismal. But at least you’re sparing yourself from hearing a child say “All I want for Christmas is a new job for Mommy and/or Daddy” between sips of spiked eggnog.

So as Christmas 2009 approaches, we can thankfully wrap up this crazy year and even crazier decade, let’s hope that future Decembers will be a little brighter. When we can look upon the rest of the year as a good one with much accomplished. When the only thing cardboard boxes are used for is presents, and not to store the contents of your desk.

From the ranks of the underemployed, happy holidays!

Brad Mislow is a freelance senior copywriter/ACD. He lives in New York and gets into the Christmas spirit as much as a Jew can. His festive website is www.bradmislow.com.