December 14, 2004
still in london
I’m still in London. Not doing much.
For the last few months, I’ve been working on my master plan: How to make The Hughtrain commercially viable (a guy’s gotta make a living, y’know?).
Yeah, part of the reason for me going to Paris in November was all about that. Paris didn’t work out like I hoped, but what the hell.
Anyway, I think I have found the way to make Hughtrain work. I should be posting the plan in a day or two.
Hint: it has nothing to do with advertising. That industry is dead.
It’s so dead it’s almost humorous to me…
So it’s now a week or two before Christmas, and I am TOTALLY broke. Hell, I’m more than broke– I’m almost destitute. But that’s what you have to do sometimes. Risk everything. It’s less exciting, fun or romantic than it sounds.
Whatever. I have the product I want to make and the people I want to work with. Watch this space.
if you are bored and fancy a during the day coffee over the next couple of days, let me know. I’d be interested to hear more about your change+IT plans.
I know the feeling, Hugh.
My wife and I had nothing in 1989 (less than nothing, really) and we decided to take a chance on ourselves. That started the ball rolling and 15 years later we’re very happy we did.
Stay focused…you’re on the right track.
I agree with the others — You are so close Hugh
Rob
yo! did you see the Wired article about the viral commercial for ipod?
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,66001,00.html
it resonates with your comment about the death of advertising…
hope your holidays are good and 2005 is prosperous, etc…
one other thing…prominent mention of your “write from the heart” comment in Evelyn’s Crossroad Dispatches.…you have influence and an audience…must be some way to method to make a living with that…
Advertising is far from dead. It may well be dead for you, as it may well be dead for me. But take a look around you, man. Advertising is more powerful and more pervasive than ever.
Best of luck on your new adventures.
Dave, I meant “dead” as in an industry worth getting into, an industry with great prospects.
I’ve been lurking around your blog from a while because I like your cards and some of your insights. I have not chimed in before because I am not on the creative side of advertising. Rather, I come from the business-side of advertising — the buying and selling of ads. If my skills in putting plans together for the cable television advertising industry can help you, let me know.
I would revise the statement “Risk everything” to be “Risk is everything”. No matter how much time and effort you put in at the margin of a day job, it’s still a marginal activity. Being committed is risky. Most people never get started because they can
If you fancy a free room & Internet in central Cambridge let me know — I just love your cards
Best of luck, Hugh.
Take heart, mate .. and in the immortal words of Robert Crumb ( or one of his characters ) keep on truckin’.
Broke is no fun, but …
thought I’d share this with you. I was talking with my mate Euan Semple on Skype yesterday, who mentioned the two of you had met … during the conversation I reminded him of my decision to quit working at a job that felt false, and live simply and say what I thought and believed until whatever it was i was/am meant to do filled up my own gaping void (10 years ago I earned more than 10 times what i earned in 2004. And then there’s this .. a guy (Stirling Hayden) who turned his back on a successful acting career and went sailing. Here’s what he had to ssay in one of the books he wrote.
To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… “cruising” it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.
“I’ve always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can’t afford it.” What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of “security.” And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine — and before we know it our lives are gone.
What does a man need — really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in — and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all — in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade.
The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.
Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?
Yeats also wrote a poem that had essentially the same message, titled The Choice. Ironically, I was given a book of Yeats poems with that particular poem in it when i quit my fancy management consulting job in London in 1994, at the height of my earnings success.
The Choice
The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.
Hugh, looking forward to your plan. Whatever it is, you’ve got a community of people around you that will want to help you be successful with it. We’ve never met or even Skyped, but you can count me on that team.