Last Resorts

When you’ve been in this business as long as I have (which in geologic time isn’t that long, just ask Devils Tower National Monument when you get the opportunity), you learn ways to rouse yourself from a creative slumber. At times, that means banging your forehead against the glass conference room door until a hairline fracture appears (on both your hairline and the door) deeming the workspace “unsafe” and sending you home for the day to finish Sir Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples. You may prance into work the next day claiming you read the girthy tome, but you did no such thing. You slipped into an intellectual coma in a bathtub full of ice and expensive bottles of champagne, while some disembodied voice read it to you. Whatever that is, it’s not reading.

Your team sits there channeling their inner Burt Bacharach, wondering, “when will good ideas suddenly appear?” Let’s say the headbanging doesn’t work. You could try humming bars from the greatest jingles of the twentieth century. It won’t be enough. 

But you always have one final option. Many creative directors prefer not to go there unless it’s absolutely necessary. They call it, aptly enough, the Last Resort. It’s what you do when you’re all out, spent, dried up, unable to string a sentence together without breaking down in tears. You’re rotting - your team can see it and your bosses can smell it. It’s time to leave.

Without saying a word, you pack up and head straight to the nearest travel agency. Maybe you didn’t know travel agencies were still around, putting them on the same plane as fax machines. But they are and here's your chance to find out. Like a goose, you must go south. I’m talking far south, way past Delaware even. Out of the country and ideally, into the Caribbean. That’s right, you’re headed for a vacation resort. The land of pool noodles and sunglasses, surrounded by loungers lathering sunscreen on their noses and nothing else. The sound of a flat sandal hitting the concrete around the pool should be music to your uninspired ears. Once you arrive, you have a few weeks to figure things out. Have a tropical cocktail, attend a pork roast, line up for conga. The specifics of your trip are interchangeable. As long as you’re away from the office and never too far from a steel drum, you’ll be just fine. There are a list of pre-approved resorts at most agencies. Take up the request with HR. 

Here’s the catch – this is your last resort, remember? So after this scuba diving sojourn, there are no more Caribbean getaways in your future. No more return trips – don’t bother saying "see you next season, mon," to the friendly surf pros. You want to hit a resort again after this, try Resorts World Casino on Rockaway Boulevard. Because that’s as close to the ocean as you’re going to get. You called in a favor and opted for the last resort in the service of creativity. What'd you expect?

The good news is that from now on you’ll be swimming in ideas. Either that or you'll drown in them until they finally sink your career.