I mentioned in the previous post that the past few days at work have been a little… intense. And by “intense” I of course mean “unrelenting,” “all-consuming,” “utterly draining,” “mind-numbing,” and “soul-crushing.”

Now, I like my job, something I feel compelled to state for the record every time I give public voice to a complaint. (I also feel compelled to voice those complaints in the first place; I have a lot of compulsions, it seems.) No, really, I do like the job. Most of the time. But these hectic patches take a lot out of me, physically and mentally. The way I’m wired, I can hear the despair-wolves howling in the distance on the best of days. When I start feeling like I have so much to do that I can’t take the time to breathe, those buggers come right up on the front porch and threaten to batter down the door with their racket. The only thing that makes these busy periods bearable for me is the understanding that they’re temporary.

But Bennion, you might be saying, what have you got to complain about? You work in advertising. Isn’t that all booze and broads and oversized cars, like in Mad Men?

Well, yeah, sure it’s like that… for the creative directors. That’s not what I do, though. What I do is a lot more… or maybe it’s a lot less… um…  well, here, perhaps a little illustration will give you a better idea. Ladies and gentlemen, the immortal Charlie Chaplin:

Yep, that’s my recent days in a nutshell, only my widgets are made of paper and the bolts I’m twisting are covered in red ink.

Incidentally, you may be wondering what jackass added sound effects and voices to a silent movie. That would have been Chaplin himself; this clip is from his film Modern Times, which was released in 1936, well after the advent of synchronized sound in movies. Modern Times was in fact conceived as Chaplin’s first talkie, but he realized at some point that his signature character, The Tramp, worked best as a universal Everyman if you never heard his voice. Sound effects and even some voices (but not The Tramp’s) were fine, but overall, the movie was made the way he’d always made them… and its brilliant and still very much relevant today.