Every month or so I find myself asking the same question: why, with just one go around in life, with just one trip to the human existence plate, did I choose to make ads?

More often than not, this very general question is preceded by more specific ones.

Why am I on the Bay Bridge at 5:30am on a Tuesday morning? Why am I downloading rough cuts with my mother-in-law's dial-up Internet connection two days before Christmas? Why, as I leave for yet another trip to LA, does my four-year-old son meet me in the driveway and say, "Thanks for visiting"?

There are many ways I attempt to find the answers.

One is to remind myself that I don't have the attention span to do much of anything else. Nor, for that matter, do I have the attention span to do much of anything else.

Another is to share what I do with my parents. Recently, I showed my Dad four Comcast commercials I was particularly excited about. When the spots finished playing, he smiled and said, "Did you know Comcast's stock has doubled in the past year?"

Dad and I love each other more than life itself, but I think I'm done seeking him out for career reinforcement.

A third thing I do when I feel the need to justify my career choice is to write some sort of article. Do a little public catharsis. What you're reading right now is an example of that, a little exercise to help me, and possibly you, feel good about what we do.

Which brings me back to the original question: am I glad I chose advertising? And the answer is yes, ultimately, I am.

I'm glad to be in advertising because I get to make ads. Ninety-nine percent of the world goes to work to make money. We go to work to make words and pictures. And if we make good words and pictures, we make pretty decent money, too.

I'm glad to be in advertising because it keeps changing. If we were still confined to making 30-second commercials and spread ads, I think I'd need about seven Red Bulls a day to get anything done.

I'm glad to be in advertising because I'm in my mid-40s but am asked to think like I'm 28. In what other industry are you rewarded for not growing up?

A couple weeks ago, I was getting dressed for work around five in the morning. I left the lights off so my wife, Beth, and my seven-year-old son, Ben, who had crawled into bed with us, could sleep. As I stumbled around in the dark, I had one of those now familiar existential ad moments where I muttered to myself, out loud, to no one in particular, "What the hell am I doing?"

But this time, from under the covers, my newly awakened and sharply observant son piped up with the answer, "You're putting on your pants, Dad".

And so I was. And so I will continue to do. Partly because it would be off-putting to many people if I showed up for work half-naked.

And partly because, as silly and self-important and irrelevant and sometimes meaningless as it can often be, I still kinda love making ads.

Jamie Barrett is creative director and partner at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco.