You're Going To Eat This Kale If It Kills You

Working in advertising is like wearing an old sweater from college that you've just re-discovered on the top shelf of your closet. When you find it, you're faintly happy to see it, so you can't resist trying it on. After about thirty seconds you begin to itch and find you've made a horrible mistake, and then (you idiot) you remember that you made this exact same mistake about a week ago, and two weeks ago, two months ago and five years ago. Over and over again, you keep finding the sweater and every time you find it, you forget why you hate it so much.

You do this because of the drippy, mis-remembred gooey-nostalgic feelings you have associated with the sweater. What you've built up over the years into this fantastic story is nothing close to the truth.

Advertising's like that, too. Some of my best friends have tried, unsuccessfully, for years to get out of the industry, but as soon as they're out they begin to wax romantic for the good old days of late-nineties holiday parties that rained five-dollar bills down like confetti, for the time they got to share a limo with Charles Barkley or got lost on the way to the Vegas airport and wound up spending 36 hours on the strip, all expenses paid. The old glory days. It's all remembered wrong, of course (the fives were actually ones, it was really just Charles Barkley's agent, it was only four hours on the strip) but none of that matters in hindsight.

And then there's the Mister, who has been in and out of advertising (and in fact, in and out of one agency in particular) so many times we have both lost count. On the wagon, off the wagon, on the wagon. On. Off. On. Off. (I'll stop doing that. I think you get the picture and plus, it's annoying.) I'm not really sure why he keeps getting sucked back into the ad business. It could be as simple as the smart, friendly coworkers and megamillion-dollar bonuses or as complicated as, well, I'm not really allowed to say. Anyway I don't really think it matters.

As his partner in crime and astonished witness to what happens in advertising, I've decided to ignore root of the problem and resign myself to treating the symptoms (like any good wife, right?) that keep popping up because of his career.

So far, the best band-aid this year has been kale, in massive, more-than-anyone-should-probably-ingest quantities. Actually, kale is probably good for fixing more than just the ills of advertising, but I've got to stick to what I know. Eating kale (steamed raw juiced diced sliced chopped and baked) has made everyone around here feel just a little less crabby about everything else. And that's a good thing. And it reminds me that many more of my dear friends (who, by the way, also swear by kale) have gotten out of advertising, for good. And so there is hope.