Just a MIN.

Just a MIN.

So, there are jobs. Then there are pitches. Then there are award ceremonies.

And then there are the things you’re trying to keep half a brain on in your real life.

As November spools past, I seem to have survived them all, even if nearly all of them have felt rather like some sort of pointless penance – like a time-wasting detention to just get through, so you can go home. Not to actually get anything for at the end. Just out.

Given the efforts involved in executing most of them, and the level of skill I and my team members all seem to have invested in them, it’s interesting that the one to feel like the most fruitful was the one where all I did was fall into someone’s car for five hours and get carried to a free dinner.

People always focus on the lunch. Turns out they should turn their blagging efforts to somewhere past tea time.

The MIN awards in Manchester this week came for me on the back of a long old week in the early-morning/late-night saddle. I was knackered, as Gel, Deb and Steve from Thinking Juice whisked me off to the North for a be-bibbed-and-tuckered freebee. And I knew that they were each just as knackered. So who, I wondered sleepily in the back seat, who exactly would be in any fit state to drive HOME again the next morning?

That I was able to swan around in a tux with them and be there when they came within a gnat’s hat of winning Agency Of The Year – before being allowed to take home the South West Agency Of The Year piece of trinketry – was an honour, I should say. Those guys can hold their heads up with anyone in a room full of UK agency creatives. In truth, I think they could honestly hold them a lot higher.

If any of us could hold up our heads at all by the next morning.

It felt like one of the more rewarding moments of the last few months, not because the award was for anything I had done, but simply because being with those you care about at little key moments are, I’ve long believed, the real gems to be grabbed on your life journey.

A noble and dedicated philosophy that has seen me passably rich in such things and otherwise working out of my bedroom at nearly 40.


After today, for various reasons, I essentially just want to go to bed. Having made it this far now seems like payment enough. It may sound defeatist – but firstly, I’m a lover not a fighter, remember, and secondly, if you’re not a believer in plateaus you haven’t climbed high enough yet.

Not a single one of the many investments Momo’s creatively made this year may bear fruit. Working your ass off isn’t enough to fight the force of some narrative directions. But that’s fine. There are following chapters.

Remember, Harry Potter and The Order Of The Phoenix seemed an interminable drag to read the first time. But it was essential to the rip-roaring plot denouement of the series.

Right now, I’m grateful for being given any chance to fall flat on my back for a moment.

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