"Hello, 911? I'm on fire."

I used to have a sign on my office door that read, “Poor planning on your part does not mean an emergency on mine.”  This was a total joke because I was part of a fast-paced advertising agency in Los Angeles and was managing a publicly traded retail account.  All bets were always off and I was usually running around like my hair was on fire.

None of that bothered me.  We would laugh until we cried and I loved working with edgy, smart people on challenging projects.  Until it did start to bother me and no matter how brilliant the people were, I was wandering around the office late at night mumbling to myself.  Because of my time there, I can spot burn out a mile away.  It isn’t bitchiness or booze, those vices spew freely from people in all sorts of positions. Fatigue and illness are my tells.  Towards the end, I had a sore throat most days and was popping antibiotics with double espresso chasers for my sinus infections.  I blamed it on the smog!  Never mind we had moved to San Francisco for my husband’s job and I was commuting back to L.A. every week.

The Professor finally convinced me to quit without having a new offer lined up so I could take it easy in between gigs.  I slept for a week straight and then took my time finding the next job.  I remember being nervous that I would come across as weak if I wasn’t employed.  I don’t do the hat-in-my-hand act very well.  I went on countless interviews, to probably every major ad agency in San Francisco.  I refused to look at tech accounts because one dot com maniac in our home was enough.  I was holding out for my true passion—I wanted another Fortune 500 consumer product.

A few months went by and I started to think maybe I was crazy for giving up a sweet job at a hot agency only to be out of work on my couch in another city.  I felt foolish and frumpy, but I was finally rested and healthy and wanted to get back to work.

Finally, a headhunter found me.  A marketing agency (walking distance from where we lived in downtown San Francisco) needed a high-energy Account Supervisor for their Visa U.S.A. account.  Thank God I had waited!  I almost took something that didn’t excite me but decided I wasn’t going to let fear or impatience boss me around.  Yeah, yeah, I know, easy for me to say, I had the wunderkid supporting me.  Seriously, though, whether you are alone, in a family, in a boom or recession, I still say, always remember who’s in charge.