Today is the first post. The first day of the rest of my life. The first day to begin the first full week of my first job after graduating from a 5 year Bachelors of Architecture. I am what you call, an freelance architect. In New York City, this is a position shared by many, envied at times by some, and in my best belief, not worth the effort. I don't want to rant right away, but how else can I grab your attention?
I think I'm in the same shoes as plenty of people around the greater New York area. Interns, Freelancers, Draftsmen. We've just spent the past 5 years learning the form, function and potentially life-altering functions of the two architecture can have on our society. Learning how the world revolves around the spaces we create, the emotions they provoke, the sentiments they carry, and the history they wait to write down upon their own walls, to be transcribed by our future generations on the ruin walls of our time's greatest achievements. The greatest city can be your friend or foe right? Everyone is here, sharing, interacting, pushing one another forward to advance the city, and country itself (not to mention the advancement of each and every immigrants own countries through the trickle of capital, culture and ideas back home). 8 million individuals, for New York is a city of individuals, each of whose common goal is to have a place to sleep at night, a meal to eat, and a cold drink to wash down the taxi fumes inhaled, subway stench one could practically taste, and discharge of oils, toxins, and carcinogens off the East River. Each of us looking to make a dollar out of our 15 cents (Which in my case is a dollar for coffee Ill never get 15 cents back from taxes for... I usually get that mud from the cart-guy).
With no certain direction as to where this blog will head, how long I'll blog for, or whether anyone will read, I am going to outline the daily life of a freelancer, unsure of how soon his current pay will end, and the search for new pay begins. It may be stressful, and uncertain, but as an architect, these are basic feelings I have grown fond of. I don't know a single architect who sleeps before 12 midnight, doesn't have something to complain about (or drugs to stop them from complaining about them), or a actual idea of what the next day might hold. So join me, as I wake up tomorrow at 6 am to leave the sanity of my home, to hit the insanity of the city. As I throw myself headlong into the start of my career, scrambling to secure a steady income before those student loans make me regret not moving to a farm to live off the land when I had the chance. I am a Full Time Freelancer in New York City, and I'll do just about anything I somewhat learned in school, and send you a resume to tell you I have the 'professional' experience no other student out of college could possibly have, all in the name of scoring that freelance job for the next month. Architects don't sleep, but we still gotta eat.
To all my fellow graduates, architects, interns and the like,
Get some rest, tomorrow is another day, unless its past midnight..then its just one long day. Push on through.
P.S. - Tomorrow I am going to tell you about my current freelance position, how I got it, and how much hell its cause me in only one week!
