Before anyone occupied Wall Street, even before the crash of 2008, I found myself scratching my head and wondering, "What now?"

I had spent 15 years in advertising as a staff copywriter around New York City. In 1995, I went freelance to stay home and take care of my baby boy. I had the best of both worlds: career and motherhood, all done from the comfort of my own home. By the end of 1997, a daughter was added to the mix and I had a plan (the sound you hear is God laughing.) I was going to continue to freelance until my children were in high school, then I would re-enter the workforce and it would be as though I'd never left. If only saying it made it so.

In 2004, when I was 46 and four years before the economy took its turn, I watched as my clients distanced themselves from me. Some exits were brisk, as they were leaving their companies, most not of their own accord. Others though were like passive-agressive lovers who suddenly have to work every Friday night, then have "something come up" on Saturdays, while more and more days separate their phone calls, until your choice is to go to the police and file a missing person's report or accept that he has left you.

I would not give up on the industry that I had so much wanted to succeed in since I watched Darrin Stephens create campaigns for McMahon and Tate on "Bewitched." But I had no luck making new contacts to replace the old.

With down time on my hands, I got more involved than usual in my children's schools. Where my son went there was a dividing line between boys' moms and those of the girls. Because I was on the "other team," there were girls' moms who confided in me because they felt their secrets were safe. I was appalled by the goings on, not of the female students, but of the women who were raising them.

Right about this time, "Mean Girls" starring a pre-train wreck Lindsay Lohan come out and I did something that I'd never done before. I sat down and wrote an essay about how mean girls learn their trade from their mean mothers. I never considered myself a "real" writer, since magazine ad headlines and snappy patter in TV commercials does not a scribe make, so I was quite surprised and pleased at how effortlessly my words poured from my pen. 

Not knowing the submission protocol, or anything about publishing in general, I called the editor of a local Manhattan newspaper and requested his email because I would be sending him a piece to publish, never imagining that he might choose to reject it.

No, I can't believe he did not hang up on me either.

Not only that but a day later he called to tell me that he would be running my work in the next issue. My byline got me hooked (who needed advertising?) and made me a bit too sure of myself. "That was easy," I thought. It took only about a couple of unsold essays to realize how not easy it was.

My dumb luck with a dash of talent had brought me to a new path, not that far from the one I had been on, but different enough that I would have to start over. I figured I could give in to fear/pride/laziness (pick one) and go back to waiting by the phone for my ad contacts to not call, or I could get moving.

I took some classes in essay writing, as well as ones in how to sell what you produce. I set up some exploratory interviews with writers and editors to get a handle on the industry. And a second career was born; one that has resulted in a column that runs in two Manhattan newspapers and another that appears online. Because I'm freelance, I've also been published in quite a few other venues. Somewhere along the line I also got the wherewithall to write a novel that was published by a small press in 2009 when I was 51. 

In the past seven years, there has been a natural progression to my journalism career that I never knew in advertising, where I was always struggling; going against the grain it seemed.  

Now instead of selling products, I have a lot more statisfaction selling my thoughts, opinions and life lessons.

Sorry Darrin, I'd rather be Jimmy Breslin.