I haven't posted in a forever.. wow

[transomwhiplass]

I haven't been purposely avoiding my LJ. What I've found, more than anything in the last year or so, is that the more you do the less you post about it in a blog. So essentially, I write the most when nothing interesting is happening in my life. That is actually kind of sad because it means that I'm not capturing these amazing awesome times with thorough documentation. It's also pretty sad because I don't really have these profound moments of doing things that compared to a sea of nothingness seem so interesting that I need to write about them ASAP. Even better, I'm constantly doing things.. they just seem the norm.

My writing here just doesn't feel like it used to either. I used to feel so confessional in high school, I just wrote about everything, anything whenever it jumped into my head. Just, stuff doesn't flow so naturally. My best guess is that I really abhor the feeling of repetiveness and at the moment, I feel like I do my fair share of repeating throughout the different groups of people I'm talking to: roommates, APOers, studiomates, Anthony, Jon, etc. So yeah, I'm neglecting everyone else I know (and myself to a degree) but I'm getting the cathartic purge of sharing my troubles and joys somehow, at least.

Well, yadda yadda, I'm here now. So I should probably actually say something.


I'm doing extremely well. The first week of school was rough. I felt so unsettled and on the wrong foot, pessimism was abound and the whole starting architecture thing in a less than stellar way made me feel kind of doomed and out of place. Lately though I feel like I'm really coming into my own and feeling all of these amazing things that I expected and yearned to feel for so long. Let me just sum up my week in a box and it will probably give you a good idea:

My class has been working on the grotto and altana project that we got an extra week to work on versus the other classes. This was both a help and a hindrance, mostly mentally because I was so in awe of everyone's completed, more hasty projects - mine felt like utter shit. However, I've been putting so much time into studio it's actually kind of disgusting, over 12 hours one school day. I put so much time, yet I don't even notice. Everything I do, I do mostly for myself - to a degree it's to try to impress others, but not really. The toughest critic is me and I'm having a hard time winning myself over. This working on projects before they are due, producing drafts, incorporating ideas from multiple stages of thought, studying, having actual competition etc.. this is all so new and amazing. The procrastinator is dead when it comes to this shit. If that isn't a miracle enough from the heavens that this major is so completely perfect for me, then maybe the fact that everyone is weird like me and I actually have fun working multiple hours (even bunches on the weekend) says something. On Wednesday, we went to Portland to visit the gardens. I was like an overstimulated child in a candy/toy/fun circus, every place I looked was amazing: every building with its gables, brackets, windows, cantilevers.. everything just felt profound and beautiful. In my head I kept debating how I would draw something or what materials I would use to model it.. it was kind of sick when I think about it, but it was so fabulous. We had double projects due this week because of the extended deadline: the grotto/altana assignment for studio and the avalance hut project for design skills. Wednesday I spent the better portion of the night meticulously working on my avalance hut (a concept that we only had to produce in drawings) on presentation vellum. I was a freak with my lettering and it made all the difference (though I was cursing myself for using a font with glyphs). That was due Thursday, so I got very little sleep between that night and the next. I went to class so exhausted but I had to work on my Grotto/Altana for Friday. I spent all day working, I bought my mayline (parallel rule thingy - it helps you make constantly straight lines) and installed it in my freshly cut drawing board in an hour. It saved my life. I spent all night working up until the final hour - not because I had procrastinated or not employed every free hour I had working, I just wasn't satisfied yet. My studiomates and I had some good bonding. Review was hilarious because Demetrius brought in Jim Givens (the widely teased, pompous 201 professor who I kind of love at times) to individually review our projects. Today, I had to go into school to start research for the next project and I actually had fun. Fun doing research in the library on a Saturday. There are about a million things wrong with that sentence, but it's true. For that I'm joyful.

I've found my place. Like a puzzle piece wedged between two couch cushions longing for its breathren - I've been reunited, dare I say it, hell, I'm sleeped deprived.. and it feels so good. Friday, I had a bonding moment with a studio buddy because we share a common love for "F pencils." We get eachother's mutual obsessions. Finally, what people said about architecture taking up a lot of time but being worth it if you love it is true. I spend hours doing hard, gritty work.. the deadlines loom in the background, but I can chit chat while I work, listen to music, contemplate the world, relish in life.. it's just so incredibly perfect. People keep commenting that it's so fucked up that we work so hard for a pass/no pass class. I can't imagine it being any other way - I'm not working for the grade, I'm not working just so I can pass, I'm working so I can learn as much as I can from the project to put out the best possible piece of work I can. We don't learn from some detached lecture by taking notes and regurgitating, we learn from gentle suggestion, inspiration in random places, ourselves, eachother.. it's a beautiful, organic, communal thing. I've never felt so overwhelmingly satsified and thirsty in my academic career.

This is what I've been waiting for my entire life and it's like a mind/life orgasm. I just can't even communicate how happy I feel these days. If you actually hear me talk about this stuff, I'm spitting it out words a mile a minute really loudly, looking longingly out into the distance (if you know me, you know this is how I talk.. often). I've wanted nothing more than a challenge and a true interest to capture my long term interest. The more I do this, the more I realize this is what I've wanted to some degree my entire life before I even knew what architecture was. It's so incredible, it feels practically fated..

I'm in love. That's all I can say. Take that for what it is..

Today, my Eugene Weekly horoscope (the best horoscopes in the world) was so fucking dead on it was scary. I wish I had it on me but essentially the first sentence said:

"You may not know it, but architecture shapes your life, idea, and moods..

I pretty much died when reading that.



So just know, despite me not posting.. things are even better than okay.