To find your path, look inside.

People sometimes ask me why I became a copywriter. The answer to that is pretty simple. I loved the actual process of writing copy. Nothing about traditional writing as I understood it felt right. I hated rules of grammar. I loved the offbeat humor I read in ads in magazines. As a kid I plastered the doors of my room with ads written by copywriters I would later learn were at the top of their field. Copywriting connected with me in ways nothing else before had. Once I learned copywriting was a real job, and I learned just a tad about how to write it, I loved writing a clever headline and encapsulating a long wordy description into a single line. It was fascinating to me to do so. I loved the challenge. I loved that kind of work.

People also sometimes ask me why I left advertising. That’s pretty simple too. The work, for me, had gotten more about the things I don’t find interesting at all — like new business pitches, winning awards and internal politics. Competition was emphasized more than creating a message for a shared purpose — and that competition was not my purpose. Sometimes the “pitch” felt too formulaic and unoriginal. I can’t stand anything more than a formula or a this is how we always do it mentality.

As an introvert, once it got to be too much of an extrovert’s game, as opposed to a craft to hone and polish, I was less excited by the ad game. It took too much energy and emotion for me to play that game. It sucked the life out of me. I had to look inside and truly listen to myself. And that meant I had to get off the…