Good morning 2018!

Smell that?

There's something in the air. And it's not the smokey ashy remains of the nearby Thomas Fire that is literally eating up huge swaths of the Santa Monica mountains. Nor is it the decaying flesh of a democracy that once had the world's respect but now has a monopoly on the world's disdain thanks to a covfefe-drinking, pussy grabbing, would-be book burner.

No, the thing that I caught whiff of and haven't smelled in a long, long time is called hope. It's the refreshing aroma of optimism.

I'm not speaking in political terms, something I've been doing way too much of.

Because it would be all too easy to be fooled by Alabama's recent election of Doug Moore. Yes, he won. But let's not forget it was by the slimmest of margins. Let's not also forget his opponent was a child molesting, gun toting, Stone Age Bible thumper. Roy Moore did everything but don a KKK white robe to the podium and claim he was a card-carrying Grand Wizard. Actually, if he had done that, he probably would've won.

My rosy outlook springs from something more personal.

Something more vocational.

As I might have mentioned last week, I've been extremely busy, lately. So busy in fact that this entry, normally written in advance on Saturday morning, is currently being penned on a Sunday, with an NFL football game blaring in the background.

After several less than busy months, I'm now swamped. Yesterday, I got a call and had to turn away an assignment. If you know me and have seen the bills from the college bursar's office at UW and CU, you know I don't do, "No."

Of course, my buoyancy goes beyond the quantitative. Yes, it is nice to be sending out invoices again. It's very nice. It's even better to be getting paid by people who are not under the thumb of Big Holding Company Schmucks.

You see, lately the spigot has been turned on by smaller, independent agencies, startups, PR agencies and even production companies.

These are people who don't govern by committee. They don't do 329 page decks. They're not lacking in confidence and don't switch up the strategy every time they get a nervous email from a twitchy,  indecisive client. The folks I've been dealing with are smart, confident and courageous. And I'm not just saying that to pander and feather my bed for 2018.

OK, maybe I am.

In any case, I'm much more bullish on the upcoming year. I know I'm botching up an aphorism used by Rob Schwartz, but maybe, after eating so much broccoli and cauliflower recently, maybe we can finally get to the ice cream.