In another life, I would have liked to be an ad man.

It’s not something that I’d actually want to pursue now (and I can’t imagine I’d want to make such a big career change in the future), but it just seems like such a wonderful combination of frivolity and pressure.

The idea of being able to sit around an office and come up with wild and crazy ways to end people’s minds into buying your products just sounds like a fun time. I’m full of mind-bending ideas. Name a product; I can help sell it.

What’s more, it seems that so many ads that I see are just simply bizarre. I wonder how much artistic license marketing teams get. Is there more room for failure? Less?

I guess, in some ways, it’s a bit like being a game producer or designer; after all, the outsider’s view must be that all we do all day is bounce ideas off each other and play foosball. That’s not entirely untrue, but it doesn’t tell the full story.

I’m sure there are other aspects to being an ad man that aren’t as fun. For example, would I be forced to have an affair with my secretary? And speak in a low monotone all the time? And drink cocktails before noon? None of those sound too appealing.

On the other hand, I would get to wear cool hats without being “that guy that wears hats every day for no reason.” Although I suppose that’s not such a bad thing to be either. I started to kind of be that guy in college, but I never took it all the way.