I'm happy today and I was yesterday. Lots of creative things going on! I've written before about how I get so frustrated by the pace of business. So many of my ideas have to wait to get developed, mostly because we're still developing the ones I had two years ago.

I hadn't heard from one of our partners for a long time, and they surprised me yesterday by calling and asking me to help them with some copy concepts to take our joint project to the next level. I find that big fun. 

I had a serious talk with my designers early this week to talk about managing our projects more strategically and to talk about follow-through. Just like all of the designers I've had here, they give priority to client projects and leave mine to languish. To them, the client's needs are more pressing because they're  more immediate. I say MY projects are just as important because mine are what move the company forward. Part of it is my fault. I don't set firm deadlines and if I do, I don't follow up on them. They asked me to work harder on that, so we all have a new focus. Now they're back to focusing on our newest collection, our latest wedding story for the wedding home page, and our Mutoh contest essay and "video." We all seem to have a new energy about our internal projects, which allow them, I think, even more creativity than they experience with client projects. 

I am having SUCH a good time with the Mutoh project. I downloaded some of the top videos submitted for last year's competition to see what we're up against and there were those of us who made unkind remarks about them. "Surely we can beat those," I think to myself arrogantly. But the Mutoh judges may prefer the grainy, deadly serious, excrutiatingly long videos from their typical retailers. Ours is serious but also plain silly. (Please refer to a previous blog entry regarding sad faces.) If we don't win, so what? I had a blast doing it. M.

My 80-year old dad now works for us full time. He comes to work around 8:30am, takes a 2.5-hour lunch (and sometimes nap) and comes back to work until around 4:30pm. (He has to be back home early because the retirement place where he lives starts serving dinner at 5pm.)

My dad does everything. He empties the trash, he sweeps the floors, he does most of the simple handwork of making Graffiti–he's tiptoeing into the harder parts. He'll work on Pottery Barn orders for hours. He fixes things (most recently a cranky vacuum cleaner) and contributes lots of ideas for making our production process more efficient. He keeps an eye on the interns. He's only been with us a few months and already he feels like the production area is his turf. When he gets back from spending Thanksgiving with my brother, I'm going to give him a dollar–our traditional corporate reward (we have a little ceremony.)

I worry that he'll start to find the work tedious. He says, "If I get bored, I'll stay home a day." Note the singular. As he's always said, "You got to be somewhere, doing something."

I'm still adjusting to having my dad such a big part of my life. He's bossy. I've been pitching in a lot since we're in our busy season, and he's started telling me what to do. Hello? I've been doing this for six years. I suppose old habits die hard though, and my dad is certainly used to telling me what to do. Geord says I'm too sensitive. I think I'm adjusting. Yes? M. 

A few months ago, Geord asked me to write an essay for a contest sponsored by Mutoh. Mutoh is a company that sells lots of equipment like the kinds we use. Expensive equipment. We would like $100,000 worth of that equipment (plus training on it) which is, oddly enough, precisely what they're giving away. It's called "The Mutoh Makeover."

To win the loot, I must submit a 500-word essay explaining why we deserve to win the makeover. We can also submit four photos or a video clip no more than ten (10) minutes in length.

The deadline isn't until December of 2009. I'd been putting it off, because I obviously have lots of time. I'm hoping all my competitors will put it off so long they forget all about it. 

A few days ago, the contest popped back into my head and, along with it, an idea. 

I'm going to make sad faces on 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper and tape them to everything that we would like replaced by their makeover. Then I'm going to take pictures and make them into a slide show on my Mac. Sometimes I can't tell if my ideas are good or not, but this one makes me giggle so who cares.

The hilarious thing is that I asked two of my designers to draw my sad face. Two people with illustration degrees. It took them both like twelve tries. They WAY overthought it. I said I wanted two eyes and a sad month. Big. That's all. I didn't want to do it because I can't even draw THAT, but I finally had to draw something myself to show them what I meant. Then they said mine was ugly. Which was the POINT of asking them to do it. Finally Adrian drew me a sad face like I wanted. M.