I am trying to resist the temptation to begin this essay with a headline that I know will hook you. I don’t want to trick you into feeling an emotion you weren’t planning to feel, or to take an action you weren’t planning to take, even though I do know how to do both those things very well.Article continues after advertisement
I am, unfortunately, very good at advertising.
For years, I made a living writing and producing ads for some of the world’s biggest brands. Nike. MTV. Facebook. I once ate a turkey sandwich with Britney Spears on a shoot for the VMAs. I won an Emmy for an ad that encouraged teenagers to use condoms. I wrote a manifesto about the grit it takes to be a champion, and Michael Jordan read it in a commercial for his world famous sneakers. Then, in 2018, after nearly fifteen years in the advertising business, I had to leave my career. I got too sick to work. I suddenly had so much time. I thought maybe I should write the story of what had happened, to try and make sense of it.
As a young person, it felt like words would pour out of me. I wrote all the time. I even went on to major in creative writing in college. In 1994, I was awarded my first writing residency to study with beat poetry legend, Diane diPrima. I studied writing in grad school too, where I wrote a passable novella that was just thinly veiled autofiction. Then, in 1999, I moved to New York City, landed a job at Condé Nast, and promptly lost myself.
