GRIZZLY PEAR
I slept horribly. At first, I blamed it on the time change.
Then I realized it was the kombucha we just bought.
Of course, fermented tea has caffiene!
Working from home has drastically reduced my intake of stimulants and greatly improved my sensitivity to drugs.
This great Costco sale turned out to be a dud.
..
..
The boy found a backpack. She added a leash.
She’s leading him around the dining room. He’s barking like a dog.
They’ve recreated the album cover in Spinal Tap.
I got my first full-time architecture gig twenty years ago. I had graduated Berkeley and entered the Dot.com bust without any computer drafting skills.
So I started by moving dirt.
It was a good detour. I consider my half-year of landscaping the most influential six month stretch of my career. Plus I met some friends I still treasure today. But work in the Oakland hills slowed down so it was finally time to start work in my chosen profession.
I ran down the phone book and came across Ron Bogley Architect and Builder. Ron was still hand drafting so he didn’t mind that I couldn’t AutoCAD. He needed someone at the office working on the drawings while he managed his crew in the field.
Working in the first floor of his house, looking over the back yard, and drawing by hand was an idyllic start to this profession. It was a lonely shock going from being in a crew of boys to working alone, but it helped to have a caring mentor.
We settled into a comfortable rhythm, I’d draw as much as I could, using old sets for reference, and leave some bluelines on his desk in the evening. The next morning, I’d magically have redlines on my desk and we’d keep going.
When I first started, we didn’t even have internet at the office. I remember when we got an iMac with a domed base and an articulated LCD screen.
Even so, the arrival of broadband didn’t make a difference to my life. I only used it for typing up general notes that we’d print onto sticky back. The real work was done standing at the drafting desk, laying graphite on vellum.
But nothing lasts forever. It was a great job in a beautiful city, but there is no margin in small residential and I needed to get my professional license. A couple of years later, I got into Rice University and shipped across country.
If moving rocks in the Oakland Hills was the perfect introduction for my career, then working with Ron was the perfect start to being an Architect. Working in a small firm gave me a chance to do everything – without the computer as an intermediary.
I was lucky to get this job. I got to start my journey before CAD and followed our technological growth into today’s BIM-dominated world. More importantly, working in a very small firm is an antidote to corporate brainwashing. I will always be the happy company man in front of the client, but I know it doesn’t have to be like this. Since my time with Ron, I’ve navigated this profession with an question mark seered in my psyche.
From small to big, every organization is a choice. It’s on us to shape them as they shape us.
~
How did you start in this profession? Did it affect your path?
Hit reply and let’s chat!
~
Abandoned places are a bit of a trope, but the Romain Veillon’s photos are still stunning. I looked at them a few times to see if they were CGI. Quite the antidote to life in the desert.
Chuck Jones had a simple set of rules for interactions between Coyote and Roadrunner. I should try something like that myself.
~
Thanks for reading and please subscribe if you’d like the next letter in your inbox.
Justus Pang, RA
I woke up stressed about all the stuff we had to do.
Started the morning with an arguement.
Rough.
A little at a time and suddenly there’s a feeling of impending accomplishment.
We still have plenty to do, but less than twelve hours ago.
My parents brought us vegetables from their garden.
I sat with my mom in the shade of the apple tree.
She stripped goji leaves off their twigs. The kids rode their scooters on the patio.
Is there a more powerful magick than a quiet afternoon with dappled light?
The evening went to the park.
Kids had fun.
We saw purple hills and orange skies.
And ate a tardy dinner.
I’ve been playing around with Interstitial Journaling the last couple of days. It is a very promising productivity technique. Will write more about it in the future if the practice keeps up.
My daughter was playing hospital with all their stuffed animals lined up on the bed.
She wrote up a check-in form and asked me to make a few copies, assuming we’d do it by hand.
I told her I was going to do it on the computer. So she sat next to me as I fired up the machine and laid it out in Bluebeam. Bluebeam isn’t really a desktop publishing platform, but it works well enough.
After we were happy with the layout, we printed out a draft copy.
That’s when her mind was blown.
She just entered the age of mechanical reproduction.
After a couple drafts and we were happy with the layout, we took a break to watch the first half hour of The Penguins of Madagascar and eat dinner.
After dinner, she wanted to get back to her hospital check-in forms. At the bottom of the form was a clipart illustration of kids standing on a rainbow. She wanted to color each of the forms.
So the kids and I spent the rest of the evening coloring these forms. We finished the forms but not the movie. That’s fine. It will be here tomorrow.
It’s a little strange. She’s seen me use the printer countless times for all kinds of uses for home and work. I guess it just never registered as a tool for her life until it became her own project (she’s seen me use it many times for her schoolwork). It was amusing to listen to her marvel about the magic of the printer. I can’t remember when my dad bought a dot-matrix printer. I wonder if it blew my mind.
Parenting gives you a sparkles of magic amidst a background of drudgery. This site let’s me record those moments.
The boy has a favorite park that we discovered on Sunday. One of the perks of working from home is joining him on a visit this morning. But of course now I need to work late.
Life is a series of tradeoffs, but this is a nice one.
I spent an hour walking around Spring Mountain (Vegas’s Suburban Chinatown) while waiting for my car’s oil to be changed. It was a bit like Rip van Winkle, but since it was early, there was no one to confront.
