Creative: Creative Pro Week Day Three

Okay, so these images have nothing to do with Creative Pro Week which is going really well, but I spent most of my time talking yesterday and didn’t make any new images. I did carry my camera around all day making it appear as if I would actually use it, but it wasn’t until dinner that I got around to pressing the button.

Let me give you a little recap of my day. I normally get up early. I’m up at 6AM here, which is 3AM back home, but I don’t feel lag of any kind. I’ve done this type trip so many times I can just tell my body and mind, “You are on East Coast time,” and boom, it works. I find the closest local coffee shop, find out what time it opens then get up ten minutes prior. I cannot, and will not, under any circumstances drink hotel coffee. Hotel coffee is cruel and unusual. In this case Starbucks at the mall is the closest spot. A four minute walk through an ocean of concrete, glass and disturbingly bad carpet.

I then try to find a spot to write in my journal. Preferably outside. Yes it’s kinda hot and muggy but I LOVE hot and muggy. Hotel air isn’t real air, so getting actual oxygen helps the old melon. I wax poetic in my journal, mostly focusing on my own brilliance and certainty of one day becoming a reality television star or game show host. A few pages give or take. By now I’m done with my coffee and my heart rate is up near 180 bpm. I’m grinding my teeth, twitching and am now on the radar of hotel security.

Then I go to my room and do yoga. Yep, yoga. By myself. With a maxed out, coffee fueled heart. This is a key step in my day. Attending and working tradeshows can be a minefield of bad decisions, so you have to maintain a routine of sorts or you end up eating rubber croissants or breaking out in meat sweats. You have to eat right, exercise and when you are actually asleep attempt to get GOOD sleep. I can’t afford to come home and lose a day in recovery. I’ve got too much shit to do.

Then we went out as a team. A local place recommended by another Blurbarian. I need to say something here. I’m not cool, or hip or fashionable. I never have been and gave up trying several decades ago when I thought parachute pants and white high tops were the coolest look ever, so when it comes to landing in a city like Atlanta and finding the “hot” spot to be, I’m the least likely person of ever finding or frequenting such a place. And, I don’t eat most things due to my Lyme diet. But in this case, as a team, it was great. And to get to know my co-workers better, learn about their lives, families and histories, it’s all well worth the time and dietary infractions. And there WERE dietary infractions.

I had booze. Real, straight booze, after I muddled through the wine list, realizing for the ten thousandth time I know nothing about wine. Oh, there was lemon in my booze, so some health benefit, but not something I would normally do. And I had one slice of fried, green tomato. Totally worth it. Now, I do have buyers remorse, knowing I will potentially feel horrible after such bad decisions, which is a great, built-in defense mechanism. GONE are the days of being wild. I don’t miss them.

Back to the hotel. Write another piece for Blurb, something I can’t remember at the moment, then either read or watch television which I never do at home. Then realize television, all 57 channels, are filled with nothing more than horrible programing and nonstop commercials selling drugs with a list of mind-blowing side effects so wide ranging and destructive I find myself rolling in laughter at the thought of someone with explosive diarrhea and frontal lob numbness. Up the dosage! All the people in the ads are wearing light blue sweaters and playing in their well manicured backyards which are perpetually sunny and backlit. None of these ads have some poor schlub in a rundown, four thousand dollar a month, efficiency apartment eating ramen and watching porn. I wanna know what drugs THAT guy is on and if the side effects are what he is counting on?

And then the button is pressed and the room goes dark. Left with only my thought and the never ending sound of sirens, traffic and garbage trucks emptying the guts of the mall. Business travel is dreamy.