It sounds really obvious now saying it out loud but There’s a difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing it experientially, knowing it in your gut.
I came up surrounded by workaholics both my parents are teachers and that kind of comes with the gig. There’s also a real strong ethos of overworking in architecture. There is a very strong narrative of architecture being more than an occupation, of it being a calling. An artistic calling a social calling a higher calling.
When you’re surrounded by that narrative (and it very well could be true for some people) it’s really hard not to buy into it cuz that’s the only thing that’s presented to you. We would go regularly go 72 hours without sleeping just working non-stop. This was normal and accepted understood and even encouraged by professors and peers If not directly then implicitly. The work produced by those who worked long hours was often praised
Graduating out into the workforce into the business of architecture was a series of rude awakenings. Working the way I had in college and had been rewarded for it and not succeeding and not being not moving forward not being treated as valuable or any more valuable than others who worked less in other occupations
And then on top of it looking around and seeing people start relationships and getting married and be going out on in the evenings and on the weekends and that was not something I ever did. I tried to do both and always felt like I was failing at both so I would fall back on what I knew, The thing that was less scary but ultimately more harmful. That’s a real interesting way to evaluate things. Something can be difficult but not harmful and since can be easy but ultimately harmful
Cut to 2020 covid hits and I’m immediately let go and there’s sort of an understanding that no architecture firms are hiring they’re not going to be hiring for a long time and for the first time in ever I had no way to move forward. Nothing I could do would improve my chances of moving forward I just had to sit and evaluate and obsess and find something else to value beyond professional prowess
I think when time didn’t mean anything that’s when it really hit me in the face that it did mean something not that I was wasting mine but not using it in a way that contributed to my own happiness and that the things I always thought there would be time for I wasn’t making time for. I have to actively make time for them
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