Flickr image by FLC

“So, what do you do for a living?” Why is it that I have a hard time explaining this to people? My actual job title is Executive Producer. I work for a marketing and advertising agency. If we create something that moves around on a screen or monitor, or if it makes noise, speaks to you or plays music, I am somehow involved in the process. Some of the work I do is very public. In fact, you’ve probably seen some of it. Much of the work I do though is not going to be seen by the general population.
 

Rarely am I in the same spot for more than a few days in a row. I’m in the office, I travel some, I hold casting sessions, I go on location shoots, I’m in a recording studio, I’m on a sound stage, I’m in an edit suite…and each location represents a different role that I play at times. It’s a great job, though not nearly as glamorous as some might think it is. It definitely has its perks, though. It allows me to see a lot of different places and meet a lot of really interesting people, and it keeps me on my toes. The industry is constantly changing.

The process is changing, the technology is changing. Hell, the way people consume what we have created has changed almost as fast as the technology used to make it. As an exercise to myself, having been recently asked, yet again, what it is that I do for a living, I began to try to write out an accurate job description. When I finished writing it out, I read through it, thought really hard about it and concluded that if I were to have posted the “accurate” job description out on CareerBuilder or Monster or some other job site, nobody would apply for it. Why? Because even though it is all there on paper, it is still hard to wrap your head around, because it is constantly changing. At the same time, I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately about college teams starting their “campaign” to rise in the polls, player/agent relationships, student athletes being arrested, player abuse allegations, and other such crap that NCAA head football coaches are dealing with, and I began wondering what percentage of a head coaches actual job description would be “coaching”.
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Flickr image by atl10trader

As much as I love the start of football season, the opening kickoff in the 1st week starts a chain reaction of events. At first, these events are looked forward to, but progressively become less enjoyable. These events always take place in a certain order. First, the opening kickoff of the college football season. The second event is the beginning of conference schedules and the end of these ridiculous paycheck games, for most teams at least. The third event…hockey season starts, and I hold out great hope that my home town team, the Atlanta Thrashers, will actually make something of themselves this season.

The forth event is Thanksgiving, which includes two events rolled into one…my dietary discipline goes into hibernation for the rest of the year, and the Thrashers have managed to already get themselves out of the playoff race. The fifth event takes place shortly thereafter. It is the 1st snowfall up in Wisconsin, where I currently live, which means I get to break out the snow tubes and head over to the sledding hill. I also get to start shoveling my sidewalk and driveway. Then, of course, Christmas, more snow, more cold weather, frozen pipes, less sun light and burning desire to rip that driver right out of his snow plow and beat him with my shovel for throwing a ton of heavy, wet snow on my driveway that I worked for an hour already to clear in the first place. At this point, I now begin to hear from all of my friends from the south and out in California about how nice it is there, and how if I only lived where they did, I wouldn’t have to shovel the snow off the roof of my house. Would it surprise any of you if I told you that this cycle was in essence the origin of the college football bowl game?
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