The Creative Circus wasn't what I expected.

This post is might be a little long and ramble at times, it’s also a bit autobiographical so it gets a tad self indulgent. 

Like anybody with a modest ego working in advertising - so basically, all of us - when I heard about the Circus closing I immediately thought about how this applied to me. 

I learned a lot in my time at the Circus, but the greatest thing it gave me was the opportunity to be truly, absolutely and utterly terrible at this job without anyone watching. Okay there were a few people watching namely, Libby Hall, Ellen, my longtime nemesis Scott Model, Joe Sayaman, Luis Iglasis, Kristin Graham, Danielle Hawley, Jason Apaliski and of course don’t get me started on Dan Balser.

And when I say bad. I mean bad. Bad bad.

Bad jokes. Bad headlines. Bad strategies. Bad executions that seemed great until the moment I was standing there trying to present it to a group of people. 

When I got to Circus in the summer of 2004 I’d graduated college a few years prior and had already failed in PR and most recently resigned from a failing career as an account executive. Let’s just say things weren’t going great. 

I moved to Atlanta with one suitcase full of cloths, a mountain bike (ummm, let me tell you, having only a bike for transportation in Atlanta in August wasn’t the greatest), maybe $500 dollars to my name and if I owned a computer it was definitely a Dell. I slept on the dinning room floor of a few buddies from college (Chuck Brinker and Tim Sweetwood, I think I still owe you some money for rent) and got a job at Hand ’N Hand where I met Steve Schroth, the world’s #1 fan of a Publix sub.

When I got to Circus I was desperate. It’s ridiculous to think back on now, but I was 25 and felt like this was my absolute last chance to do something. My friends who went into banking were already Vice Presidents! My friends who were consultants were consulting on things! What the hell was I doing?!?!?

To quote from great American literary institution, The Bachelor, when I got to Circus I wasn’t there to make friends. I was there to get a job. I often see things through the prism of sports and during my time at Circus I saw the agencies I wanted to work for (W+K, BBH, Modernista!, Wexely School for Girls…oddly AKQA wan’t on that list, but that’s a different story for a different day if anyone wants to hear it) as pro teams. There were only so many spots open at any given time and I wanted one of them. Simply being at Circus wasn’t enough, I wanted to be the best person there. 

Of course, 5 minutes into my first copywriting class I was quickly disabused of this notion. Everyone could not only write, but write well. Everyone was smart and funny. 

I wasn’t special, in-fact in my mind, I was shit. 

Nothing ever ended up the way I wanted it to. It was always so clear in my head, but then it was so bad on a piece of paper. Working alone at night it was incredibly frustrating, but then something magical happened in the classroom. It turned out that not everyone hated everything I was doing as much as I did. People liked somethings and didn’t like others. People made suggestions, offered advice and generally got invested in each other. 

Truthfully, this isn’t what I expected. I thought everyone would have the same win-at-all-cost-becasue-I-don’t-want-to-go-back-to-bartending mentality. I vividly remember thinking in a few early classes that I’m not going to help this person because they’re my competition. Obviously, that is a moronic line of thinking and pretty soon I realized the joy that could be had helping someone else make their thing better. Helping them didn’t preclude me from succeeding, in fact, helping other people bring their vision to life contributed to an environment that would help me get better. 

And that’s what happened. I got better. Everyone got better. It was still a competition. Up until the day I left, I wanted to “win” every class ( I knew it at the time but re-reading this only confirms that I was not a fun person to be in classes with, yesh) but there was a collective pride in seeing those we were in direct competition with do well. 

Of all the things I learned at Circus I think the biggest lesson was that to work in an environment where I was successful, I needed to be an active participant in making others successful as well. I’m not sure I live up to it everyday, but thank you to Norm, Dan, Carrol, Ron, Sylvia and my fellow classmates for giving me the perspective to try.