An open letter to Mr. Malkovich.

Dear John,

You don’t know me, but I certainly know you better after having witnessed your recent meltdown on the airwaves during the Super Bowl.

It sure wasn’t pretty. But it was most inspiring, at least to me.

Your personal saga gave me a push. Not the kind of push you see from subway platforms in slasher films, mind you.

It was more of an internal prompt.

Yes, John, your cautionary tale coaxed me to reinvent my website and take my rightful name before somebody else scampered off with it.

So that night after the greatest Super Bowl comeback in NFL history, I sequestered myself in my den, and staged my own little comeback. I set out to build a masterpiece of monetization. The greatest freelance copywriter’s website ever, leveraging Squarespace’s “basic plan” and my equally basic programming skills.

Gone would be the days of shamelessly ass-kissing an art director or having to help fund a web designer’s new 27-inch HD computer monitor just to update my damned website.

Determined to break free from the shackles of co-dependence, I set out to build my masterpiece.

Yes, I would do it all myself.

Yes John. None other than CameronDay.com would soon be mine!

And that’s when I was bitch-slapped back into reality.

Some smarmy British-born EDM producer in San An-fucking-tonio had swiped my dot-com name right out from under me.

Holy critter shit!

In that moment, I felt every bit of your pain, John. The insatiable burning sensation of being “had” was worse than a thousand fire ant bites; the sting of personal rejection was palpable. My ensuing meltdown made your little televised tantrum look like a walk in the park, John.  In a blind rage, I demolished a vintage chair, then a mid-mod lamp. My tiki mug collection was reduced to ceramic shards of rubble. Spit spewed uncontrollably from my lips as I sputtered every expletive known to mankind. The room went black.

The paramedics said it was a mid-career panic attack. My neighbors are still whispering about it. But despite the devastating setback, I soldiered on.

Because that’s what we professionals do when faced with a dilemma like ours, right John?

We soldier on. 

I secured what I reckoned to be the next best thing as my Internet nom de plume: iamcameronday.com.

Then, got down to the business building a website that would generate gobs of viral traction for my services.

Sure John, you could say that I settled for second best name-wise. But the inconvenience of having to re-boot also gave me pause to reframe my game plan. The Falcons should have been so fortunate.

Fuck building the world’s greatest freelance copywriting website on the planet. After checking my pantry, I ascertained that I lacked the proper provisions for the grand opus I’d originally planned, anyhow.

An easily digestible smattering of work, an up-to-date resume, and contact info that a punch-drunk chimp could find during a winter whiteout was my new and improved goal.

I set about combing through the last decade and a half of my career accomplishments which was no small task, let me tell you.

But somewhere along the harrowing path to highlighting my career accomplishments, my anger at having my dot-com name stolen subsided, and was replaced by a strange, uplifting sense of gratitude.

Gratitude for everyone -- and everything -- that has inspired my work. The planners, who so diligently cobbled together the briefs; the account people who did the client hand holding; the agency owners who funded all that free pizza every time a pitch headed deep into the night.

I even found myself feeling grateful to the assholes, John.

The tortured geniuses.

The uncontrollable tyrants.

The intellectual bullies with their crippling mix of mind-blowing talent, and career-limiting insecurities. 

The hopeless communicators who couldn’t articulate their strategic objections to the work on the wall other than to demand more because it was their ball.

The preachers, the takers and empty-promise makers.

I’m thankful to every last one of you malcontents.

Because you thickened my skin.

You toughened me up for this fickle sideshow we call advertising.

You made me adhere to my own ethics in the absence of your own.

You made me care only about the one thing that really fucking matters.

The work.

After all, John, everything else is just politics and economics and petty junior high school posturing.

But I’m equally thankful to you, Mr. Malkovich.

It was you who got me to create www.iamcameronday.com.

So thank you.  And please, don’t hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to your new fashion brand. I have lots of ideas, and am available to hit the ground running pronto. In fact, that’s precisely why I designed the tasty little header at the top of my website’s front page. To tell people like you that I’m available immediately. 

What’s that, John?

Yes, of course I can do banners and social. But not any of that front or back-end coding stuff in the interest of full disclosure.

I’d probably have to master the Squarespace premium package to do be able to pull that off.

Best,

Cameron Day, a.k.a. Iamcameronday.com