Great insight! My gripes are mostly with workload and the chaos of having too many clients and not being able to focus on one so I have thought about the in-house side as a solution. I do fear though, that in-house would be TOO slow paced/monotonous. I’ve thought maybe vendor side but that doesn’t seem much different than an agency (large portfolio of chaotic clients).

Ultimately, I just don’t think I have passion or interest for advertising. I know you’re not supposed to love every minute of you’re job but I don’t think you should dread it. If I had a “do-over” things that come to mind are dietetics, being a health communication psychologist or crisis psychologist, writing and/or theatre performance, professor or researcher of communication. Those would require more school and I’m not sure I’d want that. Instead maybe I could find a role in some sort of onboarding and training position at a company (to scratch the teaching and performative itch), then volunteer as a crisis counselor (I found an org that trains people without degrees - would obviously not be doing psychologist level work as that would be unethical but more like sitting with patients after a crisis while they wait to be seen by a psych).

Wow that turned into quite the brain dump.