How I Left Advertising

Once upon a time, after nearly 14 years in a global agency network, working locally and overseas, I’d had enough.

Fourteen years is long enough for deadlines to become your weather. Long enough for “urgent” to sound normal. Long enough to measure your weeks in briefs, edits, client moods, and late nights you pretend you don’t mind.

I was at Menara Aik Hua then.

That day, the sun was blazing like punishment and the rain was falling like a slap.

I’d been restless for days. The politics, the clients, the performative tasks, the hierarchy…

And then, without any warning, I stood up.

No announcement. No goodbye tour.

No grand exit line.

I just walked out, blindly, out of the building and straight into that blazing rain.

I kept walking. For about twenty minutes.

Soaked through and through, like the rain was trying to scrub something off me.

Shirt clinging. Shoes filling up. Turban heavy with rain and burden.

And then it hit me. Not thunder. Not lightning.

The realisation.

Ham, what are you doing?

I’d walked out like a man sleepwalking.

So I turned around.

Not because I changed my mind.

Because I wanted to end it properly.

I walked back into the office, dripping, sat down and penned a short resignation note.

No drama. No essays. No speeches. Just a clean piece of paper that said, I’m done.

And I was gone.

Later, my MD called from New York. He tried to talk me out of it. The logic. The persuasion. The “think about it.”

But my mind was made up.

In fact, I refused even a farewell party.

No cake. No speeches.

No “we must have lunch sometime” theatre.

I didn’t want closure dressed up as celebration.

I wanted exit. Clean and final.

That’s how I left advertising.

Not with fireworks.

But soaking wet.