The AWOL Architect

I don’t love this post but it’s a quick stream of consciousness of the last week's emotions: Last week I had someone drop an amazing gift off at my doorstep….it was a mandala of words about me! As I read it, I fixated on one word – UNLEASHED.   Over the last few months I have begun to start to feel this way, truly FREE.   I haven’t felt this way for a very, very, long time. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was somewhere around the age of 16 since I last felt free to chart my own path in life. And really, I don’t think I ever have felt as free as I do now.   With this feeling of freedom comes empowerment and fear. Little moments of fear had been creeping in throughout the week before I left, but I was unable to recognize what I was afraid of until it rose it’s head again at the Changi Airport when my brain truly connected the fact that when I board this plane at this airport there is no going back. I realized looking at this fear that it was an immense fear of failu...

" He who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is self sacrifice." - Henry Taylor  Generosity and the Architect come hand in hand, though it may not seem like it or be able to be perceived all that often.   We are a strange bunch, let’s be honest. We are known for coming across as arrogant and extremely opinionated. Builders and Engineers say we change our minds too much. Clients think we are too expensive. And so this post comes from a stream of thoughts that occurred while thinking about a project in the shower this week… yes, in the shower.   We also do this while hanging clothes up, eating, drinking, driving, and even in our dreams; we are constantly thinking about your project.   How we can make it better for the end users!   How we can make it less expensive for the Client and funding body – who is usually the Australian tax payer ! How we can make it more efficient with use ...

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure."  Helen Keller There are stages in the development of every living being, however, at the moment I tend to identify with that of an insect, in particular the butterfly: egg, larva, pupa, adult.   In order to explain why, I must go back to the beginning of my pupa stage... the stage I’m still in. I awoke abruptly in the middle of night, on a hard wooden platform surrounded by over twenty twelve-year-old girls and lying close to my best friend Stephanie Matthews.  I knew. He was dead. My father was gone and here I was lying in the middle of the forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.  I got up and called my mother to confirm what my soul had already known and then I walked ever so slowly back to my cabin, numb and comple...