And it’s true—I do find it more engaging than shows about cops and doctors and other things far removed from my identity. From time to time I imagine taking on all those ad men at their testosterone-fueled game. (My character is, of course, ravishingly beautiful, dazzlingly smart, tough as nails, and funny besides.)

But I must confess that when it comes to TV fantasies, my true heart lies elsewhere.  I am, and will forever be, a speechwriter for President Josiah Bartlet. We watched all seven seasons of The West Wing last winter, and at one point I went so far as to do some internet research about speechwriting careers. I realize that it is probably not quite like it looks on TV. (It doesn’t help, though, that President Obama’s main speechwriter is a brilliant young phenom and something of a celebrity besides.)

Who would you play on TV? And what does it reveal about what you want in your real-world career?

I know you all have blogs you can’t live without. Bring on the barrage of suggestions!

Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

Career advice, especially about work in the new millennium. Also a lot about her own crazy career, her kids, and her sex life.  I’m a little addicted to this blog right now, but I feel okay about it because so are 30,000 other people.

Domestic Disturbances

Judith Warner’s weekly blog for the New York Times. She wrote Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, which I read during pregnancy while others were poring over baby name books, and her blog riffs on all the same themes. In a glamorous alternate version of my life I think I would be her.

Writer Mama

Author (and mama) Christina Katz and lots of guest bloggers offer down-to-earth tips to get you off your butt and building a freelance career.

Seth Godin’s Blog

Reading this big-time marketing blog makes me feel much more business-savvy and tech-savvy and generally cool that I actually am. I also love how short and meaty his posts are.

Water Words That Work

Not just for enviros. This blog is a round-up of good, bad, and ugly attempts at environmental marketing and communication. It’s a great touchstone for all of us whose work is persuasion, regardless of the issue.

Chicken Lit

This is my friend Karen Bassler’s blog about all kinds of random stuff. (Her tagline is “What’s Collected in My Feather Duster”) Like Karen, it’s funny and feisty, and it inspires me.

We’ve done our homework. We know our audience–who they are, what they respond to, what media they use. We can make some pretty good guesses about where we should put our money. But I want to know how we’ll know if it worked.

It’s messy experiment. Every year we change a lot of things–the tone and content of our ads, the media mix we invest in, how much money we spend, and what additional outreach activities we engage in beyond paid advertising.  I’ve spent a lot of hours discussing ponderously complicated evaluation schemes with wonky bureaucrats and university-types. If we’re lucky, we can document improvements in behavior from year to year, but we can’t trace those changes back to particular outreach techniques. Which would be a nice thing to be able to do, because then we could put our time and money into the things that work and forget about all the other stuff.

It is tempting to write off the whole question as hopelessly complex, except for one thing: our colleagues in the business world make these kinds of decisions all the time. And if they get them wrong there are real consequences. What do they know that we don’t?