How low can you go

In the limbo dance (I'll pause while you all hear "Leembo Leembo Leembo" in your head), the goal is to see how low you can set the bar before you decide you can't go any lower.

Sound familiar?

In advertising unfortunately this is a dance you get invited to on a daily basis. It comes at you from all directions: Client. Budget. Holding companies. People on your own team. And if you say no to the invite, then suddenly you're not a "team player" (as if I ever was), and pegged as difficult, which I may have been called once or twice. Today.

Most creatives I know would wear that label as a badge of honor. We'd all rather fail with quality than succeed with garbage. But it's easy to see just by grabbing the clicker and turning on the TV or radio, opening a magazine or going to a website, that it's not a landscape that supports that point of view very often.

It's not a state secret that in this world of reduced budgets, no AOR/project-based clients and the amount of money being spent on 360 campaigns for everything from running shoes to laundry detergent (how're those Twitter and Facebook engagement numbers for Tide working out?), agencies operate much more fearfully than they ever have.

So I just want to take this opportunity to raise a glass and say thank you to my fellow creatives, creative directors and everyone who keeps pushing to make the work better, tirelessly fighting the powers working against them and managing to turn out work that's as creative, interesting and inspiring as it is results-getting.

Also, thanks for leaving your dancing shoes at home.

Balancing act

As well as you know me, this won't come as any surprise.

There are the few rare and in between occasions where I can be what I suppose some people would call compulsive.

I prefer to think of it as laser focused.

For example, at the craps tables. Or getting Springsteen tickets to 47 shows on the tour. Say it with me: Breaking Bad.

But while those are just a few of the pleasurable pursuits I enjoy directing my compulsiveness...er...focus towards, there are other, more practical ways it expresses itself.

Laundry. I challenge you here and now to a towel, t-shirt and sock folding contest (I'm looking at you Carmen Dorr). Seriously, tread lightly and prepare for disappointment. Not only am I extremely good at it, I enjoy doing it. Which is why you don't stand a chance.

Are you the kind of person who thinks they've loaded a dishwasher to capacity, even though you still have a sink and a half full of dirty dishes? Step aside rookie. I'll reorganize your dishes in the washer, put in all the ones in the sink and still have room for that serving dish you were going to wash by hand. I'm like John Nash in A Beautiful Mind: I can see the dishes all in their proper place even before I've put the first one in.

There's one place more than all the rest where I'm relentless about making it work out exactly the way it should—balancing my checkbook.

It's an old school notion, but I still get paper bank statements. I like them. I can write the numbers on them, check off the line items as I reconcile them and easily backtrack if I need to. Almost every time, it balances to the penny, which brings me a kind of happiness few things do.

Occasionally though it's off by either a few cents, or a few hundred dollars. When that happens, I put on the green visor (figuratively-green isn't really my color) and go through my find-my-mistake ritual.

First up is checking the addition in my checkbook register. I know there are apps for that, but I like doing it. I'm Columbo on a case to find the missing pennies ("Excuse me, just one more thing..."). If that doesn't solve it, I start adding the outstanding checks and uncredited deposits. Sometimes it's a few minutes, rarely it's a few hours. But I never give up, and eventually I find the error. And I always wind up with a balanced checkbook for the month.

I know I could get online statements and do it all from my laptop. But it wouldn't give me the same feeling of accomplishment putting pen to paper and figuring it out does.

I could go on and on about the joys of checkbook balancing, but I Love Lucy will be on soon and I have to go warm up the picture tube and find my clicker.