Karmic Reincarnation

I still don’t know how I managed to score this internship at Karma agency in center city. It boggles my mind. And here, in the twilight hours of my twenty first year on the planet, I cannot help but reflect on the meandering path that lead to where I am now, and in what direction it is headed.

Tomorrow I will be twenty two. With every birthday I like to ask myself, would 10 year old Sam approve of present day Sam? What about 15 year old Sam? I don’t worry so much about 18 year old Sam, he was a lunatic. Right now, I gotta say, all previous incarnations of myself would not only be impressed and enthused with my current status as a human being, but completely surprised and blown away by my accomplishments over the last semester. And that’s quite a feat since no Sam, from age 1-21 has ever been particularly humble.

My initial relationship with the Karma agency started as most do, with emails that took hours to manicure, sweaty nervous handshakes, shaky presentations of some not-so-presentable classwork and extended finger crossing sessions. But for whatever reason they liked me, and welcomed me aboard as the 8th member of the close knit Karmic creative team.

I was given a mac book, a desk in an alcove behind the water cooler, a key to the executive washroom and a paycheck. Suddenly my life as a cynical bohemian humbug had come to an explosionless end. Hope, confidence, and a renewed faith in destiny had been reborn in me through Karma. I began to dust off the dreams I had shelved years ago, realizing that life may not be as untamable as everyone kept telling me it was. Maybe those childhood roller-coaster plans are more than a conversation piece after all.

I mean here I am, a clueless, though admittedly charismatic, college kid, with nothing on my resume except some part time gigs and a few clever gimmicks. Evidently it was enough for the overly generous creative directors at Karma, and now I’m taking an elevator up fifteen stories to an elegant office where I write things that I can point to as I ride the train, things that thousands of people will see. I’ve touched the sky! I don’t care if this is as far as my advertising career takes me, I feel phenomenal. In the brief 3 months I’ve been working alongside the brilliant minds of this agency I’ve been able to help launch an experimental degree program at an Ivy League school, write jingles and headlines you can see and hear right now at www.pandora.com/suburbansquare, market a life saving diagnostic tool to doctors (using doctory language) and write an entire informational brochure for the Sandy Rolllman Ovarian Cancer Foundation, which Godwilling, will help to raise funds for an epic cause. I’ve researched and edited and proofread and drafted and reedited and drafted some more. I’ve sat in on recording sessions and video edits and even conducted interviews so we could put direct quotes in brochures.

It’s been a great trip so far, and I couldn’t be more proud of myself.

More to come.

Wishing well,

Sam Kwietniak