The budgets are tight.  The pipelines twist around the world like hamster habitrails.  The waiting goes on forever.  The notes are ill conceived.  The toy companies are the belles of the ball.  The license fees are low, the rents are high, and the kids we cast think they’re in Annie.  The spam filter is overzealous.  The copier plays favorites.  The blog is due.  The Canadians are winning.  The monitors need to be calibrated.  My mini-Aussie, Buffy, needs a bath.  The tapes didn’t pass QC.  The conference room is occupied.  The intern got lost.  The shot is still rendering.  The puppet’s eyeball came off.  Hurricane Sandy put the restaurants five feet under water.  There were no window seats left.  The wire transfer got stuck in Hong Kong.  The client is bipolar.  The streaming rights are not available.  The tickets weren’t at the box office.  The app didn’t sell.  The press release went into Kidscreen’s junk mail.  And the M&E track had a fart on it.

But every now and then, amidst the volley of e-mails, the dropped conference calls, the line-by-line budget fights, the cacophony of execs discussing a joke as if it were the secret code of the Freemasons, something good does get made:  A song that someone remembers, a design that makes it onto a fridge, an irresistibly cute animated dance.  Yes, occasionally something pops through the screen like a daisy through the pavement.  And that’s when I’m reminded why we all do what we do.  That’s when I know it will all be ok.  And that, I believe, is why we bother.