Start Today

Feb 7, 2012

I decided today to start myself going, and called my old, dear friend Katherine Snedeker, owner of The Arrangement in Dallas and Houston. I hadn’t talked to her much since, heck, who knows when, yet she called me right back. Good when old friendships get confirmed. I decided to tell her my pie in the sky idea for the next phase of my career.

See, I don’t want to feel like it’s a drag getting old, but for about 2 years exactly, I have been feeling waylaid by age and illness. Illness first, and then the ramifications of illness set in and age becomes a factor. Let’s not get into illness, it doesn’t deserve the keystrokes, but age can be a bummer.

I was fumbling around wondering what I was going to do with my life as recently as last week, with my husband, Dennis, in NYC closing down the Nate Show. He closed down As The World Turns about 1.5 years ago, a job he worked on for 18 years, and his co-workers had gravitated to Nate. Now Nate hasn’t been picked up. Kind of like Pretty Woman, dependent on being picked up.

But there’s lots of us out there who ran thriving design businesses that for some reason or another aren’t in business today—even Nate! For all of what we/they offered, the times, the funds, the energy, the sponsors to keep our endeavors afloat, aren’t there any more. Many of my clients who were designers themselves have closed their doors: Carmelo Pomodoro (AIDS), Bill Robinson (AIDS), Adeptus Arts, Steve Fabrikant, As the World Turns, Ellea Handbags, Drizzle, Glynn Scientific, the list goes on and on. And so do we. We are creative sorts who are far from over or washed up, and feel we have something  to contribute yet in us.

So calling Snedeker who helped my old advertising firm (now closed!) weather the Liz Claiborne retainer at a very critical period in both of our lives, was good medicine. I rambled through my brainstorm. She listened. I laughed at the easiness of talking to my good good friend even after so long. She’s doing so well, it’s great she won’t be closing her doors—but she was never my client, after all.

I also tuned into a webinar about social networking. I really liked it. I got inspired. I decided today to start blogging, and this is my first.

So today is the Book of Birthday’s “The Day of Utopia”—its motto is “An Ideal World can only be Created by Ideal Persons”, an auspicious day to unleash a brainstorm, to renew a friendship, to remember I have things to learn, to venture forth. I hope so. Dickens was born on this day, Feb.7^th. It was the best of times…

Martha Voutas Donegan