Workaholism can break up a family

Monday through Friday 9am to 7pm are spent at an interactive ad agency coming up with the creative concepts for a certain Nazi airline’s social-network infused travel tracking web and mobile application, continuously bearing the brand’s distinguishing factor in mind – their ability to pump fuel into the gas tanks with impeccable timing and efficiency until the journey comes to its successful conclusion. I charge for lunch.

By mid-day, New Jersey Art Director B, Connecticut Creative Director S, and I battle it out over the whiteboard, where we pore over my never-ending supply of diagrams and flow charts, printed fresh each day, discovering previously undisclosed nuances with every hour, debating each blot of ink until one of us submits to the other’s persistence.

S, who has final decision-making rights, stands an inch closer than comfort, eyes fixed unwaveringly on the target, my face, often seeming to not quite understanding exactly the details of B and my fervent discussions, but always making the correct high-level decision regardless.  S waits a bit too long with uncomfortable silence after I emit my usual delay tactic response to his asking me if I am interested in permanent employment.  He is not afraid of silence or proximity.  This ability to create uneasiness and action on the part of his minions (myself included) demands respect, and I am taking notes.

Meanwhile young chatterbox B waxes loquacious about social media, interactive design, usability, Toffte, and just about any other topic placed in range of his curly goldilox covered ears.  He, and the rest of the agency crew, maintain poise and courtesy throughout most of the 9+ hour workdays, finding joy and comfort in each others’ company.  Sometimes I think B is a genius just through the sheer level of his commitment to the otherwise inconsequential minutia of interactive media, his lack of anxiety, and what I perceive to be a certain level of premature wisdom.  But he is no doubt young and idealistic, and I have no doubts that the final product will be mediocre but nevertheless a flagship product for this interactive agency which has apparently never created anything quite so interactive before.  (Mind you, I’ve created a dozen of these things at a tenth of the budget with a twentieth of the people…. lessons to learn abound.)

Project Manager, W, a Kenyan seemingly by birth, once a day trots her stuff by and begins to talk about the status of the project in a deceptively offhand manner.  Like S and B (without the pickle soup of the true S&B in Williamsburg), W is also surprisingly intelligent and understands the impact of most design decisions without requiring a spoon feeding of soup.  Her observations are usually acute, and I admire her ability to maintain control while I repeatedly question her authority with my snide remarks, arrogance, and unintentional but conscious airs of nonchalance.  We are all in all getting along very well.

H, the Jewish senior designer of Romanian genetics, is soft-spoken but witty when spoken with a flat affect. She believes men should be men, and not sing mopey songs about unrequited love.  I feel that we share generally similar tastes, although our interaction is relatively limited.  It is due to her that I and you have now discovered her friends’ band, Tiger Flower, although she is by no means a metal-head.  H is a skilled designer and grasps conceptual matters with little effort.

At least once or twice a week, S, B, W, and I conference with R and H, the developers in England who will most likely actually build what we have designed.  The Brits do not restrict themselves to technical discussions and frequently question my design decisions without quite addressing them as such.  S, B, and W, seem somewhat unfamiliar with these aggressive tactics of programmers, so I take it upon myself to assuage the developers’ concerns while attempting to restrict their mental meanderings to only those areas in which they will be put to use. 

Nevertheless, the Brits are clearly positioning themselves to gain control over this project, its timing, and high level decision-making through the guise of technical issues, and my crew seem none-the-wiser.  Despite their being an internal group of the London sister office of the same agency, originally, the Brits were meant to be just one of many teams of developers who would bid on this project.  Without any bidding, they have de facto claimed status as the only developers in consideration.

Thursday 7:30pm, you can see my taking nosedives off of the diving board in the NYU pool, sometimes slipping and injuring myself as I try to impress the skinny young almost-but-not-quite asexual Chinese girls under the instruction of C, the flamboyant non-professional diver extraordinaire.

diving boards are dangerous

Friday morning, 8:30-9:30, I hit balls around on the tennis court with buxom instructor A, also of Romanian descent, and the busload of middle-aged Catholic women.

Saturday and Sunday 9am to 6pm are devoted to my hard-working students, health insurance, library rights, and a meager retirement plan. Somewhere there is time for banya, booze, and social networks, vegetarian meals and naturally caffeine-free tea.

As Trina says, “I’m gonna put that pussy on top.  I’m gonna ride you until that dick drop.  I’m gonna keep going non-stop until I hear you say, ‘Trina, god damn you a bad bitch.’”