When you're an architect...

No one ever told me, that when you’re an Architect:

• You won’t be able to afford your own taste
• You’ll notice everything that is even slightly out of alignment
• You’ll never look at a building without “reading” the architecture. You’ll only analyze a space, you won’t just experience it. You’ll be a bystander…
• You’ll be endlessly fascinated with natural light and shadows
• You won’t be able to let anything go, your brain will spin, you won’t sleep
• You won’t be able to talk to anyone about what you do. No one will know what an Architect does
• You’ll be weary and content at the same time
• Your back will hurt
• You’ll be less respected than you thought
• Your shyness will be interpreted as arrogance
• You’ll be working on your craft for years, you’ll never feel like you’ve mastered it, but you’ll keep at it, everyday, again, again
• You’ll remember every single thing you did wrong on a project, and that will keep you from seeing everything you did right
• You’ll want to put everything in order, always… But, you may choose not to do that
• When you’re young, your heros will be irrelevant. You’ll figure that out when you get older
• You’ll know a lot less about construction than you thought you would
• You’ll mark the milestones in your life by the projects you were working on at the time
• You’ll come to know a little about everything, you’ll know a lot about just a few things
• You’ll begin to see the built environment as a continuously evolving form, built piece by piece by generations of individual efforts. You’ll begin to see balance between individuality and community
• You’ll often have an opportunity to be the center of attention, but, you won’t know how to take advantage of that
• You will be interesting…. eventually

Originally posted by Jody Brown in Coffee With An Architect.