Robert Cormack
1 min readDec 19, 2019

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I can add something to this, Anthony. I made my living as an advertising copywriter . I was paid to write what other people wanted written. They decided whether it was good or not. If I tried something different (it helps in advertising), I could find myself staring at five clients who looked truly embarrassed for me. That was my life for 42 years. There was no me deciding I didn’t care if I was embarrassed or not. Embarrassment wasn’t the problem. Being fired was the problem. Some clients actually called the agency and had me fired. Once I retired, I finally could write what I wanted and, yes, I could stop worrying about being embarrassed. It’s a good feeling, but it took a while (actually, a lot of reading Charles Bukowski). My point is, if we could just drop our fear of embarrassment, we would. It’s what’s associated with this embarrassment that’s the problem. We can’t all say “fuck the system” like Hunter S. Thompson (he shot himself). What we really have to do is learn how to deal with embarrassment as something that’s just there. We don’t avoid it, we don’t overcome it. We cope with it until opportunities arise when we can overcome it (personally, I think that’s what Cranston’s saying).

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Robert Cormack
Robert Cormack

Written by Robert Cormack

I did a poor imitation of Don Draper for 40 years before writing my first novel. I'm currently in the final stages of a children's book. Lucky me.

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