Random Update

The past weeks have been hectic, and I'm still adjusting and getting myself in gear. I've always been a diesel tractor when it gets to work...  A lot of the work on the church was revised, and now, I'll have to take the point position in bringing these revisions to completion.

Frustration is starting to mount as I begin to confront the limitations in budget, in technology, in ability, in execution, in imagination... not just in the other people involved in the project, but in me as well. Its been said that an architect is lucky to even get 15% of his ideas built, because these get hacked and trimmed down the moment it leaps from your imagination onto the blank sheet, into the bytes of your CAD file, and onto the hands and raw concrete on site. Thats the reality. And we all have to find the middle ground between our ideals and thoughts and the world. That is our burden.

Review has been crazy. Structural design has been a pain, more so when you consider that a few of the items being discussed were never taken up in school, and are never encountered for real on the site. What's worse is when you end up with an instructor who finds more comfort in talking to the board than to the bewildered audience, complete with eyes splayed and gawking at the beautiful yet alien symbols and variables chalkblasted on the board.

Building Technology is an even bigger pain when you start realizing just how much you don't know yet. What's worse is when you run into an instructor who is more interested in showing off just how much he knows compared to us, and humiliating students. I understand that the first step to learning is to realize you know nothing. We get the point. When will you stop being a show-off... and when do you start being a mentor?

Its all been a humbling/enlightening process. I've learned quite a few things, not just about the boards... but more about the people and society around me in general, about the systems in place, about social ironies, and how some of my decisions in the past were undisputedly correct.

The past week has exposed a lot of my good and bad misconceptions about people.  All the more things look providential and part of a much bigger plan. Its all amazing, in retrospect... and even more exciting when I realize I'm right smack in the middle of it. The challenge now is to get over the whole 3rd-person point of view, and get back into the thick of things and get it done.

Back to work for me. Its been a considerable challenge to keep myself focused despite the many distractions that modern living has built in for us. (such as this blog) Inspiration has been in short doses lately, (who am I kidding? more like... A LONG TIME) But alas... that can wait.

Until the next dose of free time!