Twenty years in advertising. TWENTY YEARS. I seriously feel like it has been five – it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. So last night, I started thinking about all the different stand-out memories of twenty years in the field. There are so many! But these take the cake. And they aren’t in chronological order – they are just how they came to mind. Here’s to many, many more!

Shooting Buckle up, Pongo. This was the name of a TV spot that we decided to add on to a shoot at the last minute. I was about 10 months preggers with Jackson (What? I wanted him to come on his own time!) and we had this brilliant idea to add a promotional perk and advertise it on TV. It featured an orangutan… buckling a seat belt. No biggie, right? Not only was he not trained like the handlers said he was, our client almost opened the spent canisters of film on set. (Yes, we were shooting film back then.) The three hour pick up shot took about ten. The fact that I did not go into labor then and there still surprises me!

Writing my first commercial but only getting to visit the set for 10 minutes – because I was the account coordinator who was trying to prove I was a much better writer than AE. (Back in my day – ha ha – our professors said take any job you can and work to where you want to be. It was the quintessential Susan Credle story. Don’t know it? Look it up.) I still have one of the props from the shoot in my office today.

Showing up to my first full shoot as a writer (IT WORKED – I PROVED MYSELF!) and being confused as talent. It was a campaign for teens – and when I walked in someone directed me to the back room, where all of the talent was sitting with their parents. I am pretty sure I had on overalls. Not necessarily the best way to introduce myself to the cast and crew as the one with the vision for the spot. Lesson learned.

Getting dropped off outside of town by an account supervisor because it was inconvenient for him to take me back to the agency. I had no cell phone. No uber. No real taxis were in this part of Columbia. I don’t know why it sticks with me – but it does. I wandered into a hotel bar and called the office hoping someone would come pick me up. David Anderson and Gayle came to the rescue. I literally sat on a curb and waited for them. And told myself I really needed to get a mobile phone like everyone else.

Traveling with clients. There was this one boondoggle of a trip with my California clients to New Orleans. I learned a very, very important lesson that weekend: never, ever try to keep up with David Anderson. Ever. EVER.

Busting ass at a trade show, then having a client award us for the ass-busting (the hotel where our client’s party was happening was not finished with renovations on the room we needed – I seriously was painting a wall five hours before guests were to arrive). So our client got us amazing seats to a sold-out Dave Matthews Band concert at the Braves stadium. As if the concert wasn’t awesome enough, I got back to the hotel and a few of us went to the bar to thank the client for the tickets and guess what happened… freaking Dave Matthews walked in. So I got to meet him. Epic.

Pulling all-nighters. I kind of love that feeling of magic that happens when a team comes together during pitch time. But this one time in particular, there was a group of us who stayed up all night comping boards together for a big, fat pitch. As the prep and set team, two of us worked to make sure all was good. We set up the room the next morning and then fell asleep in the car while the pitch team was presenting. Pretty sure they thought we were both dead when they came out to get us to help break down. I married the guy that I worked with that night. If he could put up with me for 36 hours straight, he could deal with anything.

Having phone-call concepting sessions with my design partner while nursing Emma. There’s a good eight months of my life that is lost in the blur of a nursing-working-mom. But I stuck it out for a year with both kids. And I wouldn’t trade that time I had with my babies for the world. Also – bless every person that put up with me during that time.

Watching our team celebrate a number of award wins and knowing that they did the hard work. The past year we accomplished many things. And knowing that so many people stepped up to make some crazy things happen, well, that is really, really cool. I will always want to be a part of the creative process – it is what I love – but this was a big moment to sit back and watch the looks on their faces at what they achieved.

Presenting to a client when one of their employees moonwalked by the door. Years later hired the moonwalker. Then watched him follow his dreams as he moonwalked into a bigger market.

Almost killing my design partner. I didn’t make him eat shellfish at the crew dinner – he wanted to try it. Apparently his throat was closing up by the time he turned in and he did not sleep a wink that night. Funny thing, that trip – we also figured out that we saw a Dillon Fence show in Myrtle Beach when we were in college – or maybe he was in college and I was still in high school. I still like to remind him he is older than me. But that concert… I promise there were only about 30 people there, so we had to have seen one another before we ended up working together. (Don’t remember Dillon Fence? Totally ’90s, bro. The drummer’s sister taught me how to swim when I was a kid.)

Begging to put Carla Overbeck on the Pro Health Team – a hospital campaign aimed at kids for healthy lifestyles in Charlotte, circa 1999. I just really wanted to meet her. My AE said he did not know who she was but I could put her name on the list. My client said they didn’t know who she was but girls really seemed to like soccer, so we could ask her. And then Carla said yes. So I got to shoot her (and a few other pro athletes) for print and TV. She didn’t disappoint. Total badass. I still have her autograph on my refrigerator at home.

You can find me continuing to make memories at Chernoff Newman for many years to come.