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The position that I was in was not good. Unemployment was gone, most of my high-valued personal items were moved to the safety of mom’s basement. (Basically all my architecture books, and the guitars that I had built/collected that weren’t directly replaceable). It was an interesting exercise being boiled down to your essential self, and deciding what was really important. I was selling my furniture and anything that I could, just to make rent.
I was told repeatedly that I was over-qualified to gain employment in retail, and I was squarely in a “dark night of the soul”. Eating once every other day or so in order to make sure the cat was fed – I was down around 70lbs.
I had lost the edge, my passion, my identity and most of my personal belongings and making plans to live out of my car. I was a week away from complete ruination. I was out of everything.
By the grace of whoever you pray to in a situation like that, I got hired as an independent consultant for a high-end residential architect who’s office was starting to rebuild.
To say that I was changed by that experience is an understatement, and I would do anything not to relive that.
In the climb back… I expanded the indy architect badge – working for 2-3 firms at the same time on anything that came up.
At the first firm (as a believer in learning ALL the tools of the craft) I ended up as:
Design & Project Architect
Revit support
Modeling
IT & BIM Manager – set up all the Revit templates & graphic standards.
Graphic design
Presentation Media
Photographer
Marketing
Dog walker
From there, given the LEED credentials that I held – I was brought on for a proposal for HRA work in Saint Paul.
Briefly: during the downturn – the city bought up failed mortgages and held residential properties. A federal grant was given to remodel these homes and flip them back on the market. We field measured and did remodeling design for something near 8-10 homes in the North Saint Paul area.
After that, was a limited involvement in minor projects, and a 4 month gig doing front-end information gathering for Urban Outfitters. I was flying all over the country performing due diligence and field reports on existing retail spaces and gathering information on fast-tracking projects in each municipality, from coast to coast. Full drawings, design criteria, full photo documentation, and I was researching a better way to streamline my new scope of services.
That ended when corporate decided that the next year was a remodeling year – and my services were no longer needed.
The workflow under this business model was interrupted by what I came to refer to as ‘spontaneous vacations’ when things would go on hold – so spreading myself thin was the only way to combat a sketchy workload. I was exhausted. 80-100 weeks weren’t unheard of, and I was working any place with a WiFi signal and a duplex outlet.
After a 18 months or so of the 1099 grind, my consulting came to an end. I had started a 6-year tour as a ‘temp’ at an international firm in Minneapolis.
Each of these has its own story within a story… but I’m overdue for digression.
January: I was on the typical path that had become the familiar norm.
February: Same as above – but all overtime billings were capped. For me that meant work 55 hrs, bill 40 to keep from getting scolded/fired. Hours, and therefore income dropped $500 net per week.
March/April: Same as above. On the 17th, ahead of the work from home order – I set up an internal help line for Revit support (independent of the firm-wide support) and headed home.
From home – I was more productive than ever before. Running the home Mac, VPN’d into the office PC, and just cranking out work, while running Revit support in the background and well into each night. I began sharing all the personal IP of hospitality tools on the server to support the firm’s work (see hours from above).
Still losing $500 per week minimum.
Then came the request for a mandatory Zoom meeting, and my accounts started getting closed before the meeting. I cleaned out my desk the following Friday. I was part of the ‘non-essential’ army once again.
The saving grace of PPP (sort of)
After the long sigh of filing for unemployment for the second time in this storied career – I was informed by the temp agency that I qualified for a PPP loan from them. Under this program, for 8 weeks I was to receive standard pay + $500, and shave a little off the almost 500 hours of vacation time I’d accumulated. Essentially – I as getting the same pay that I was at in January. Fantastic news!
That got renegotiated this week, and I’ve been dropped from that assistance program.
Now, I’m on unemployment – and the income level is roughly $1k less per paycheck. Life has suddenly become unaffordable.
So far, this year – we’ve been hit with Covid-19 shutting down the economy in a matter of weeks… Then, when its safe to go outside again, and there’s a glimmer of hope…
That’s been shut down by a horrible atrocity committed by a Minneapolis police officer, followed by the cities that I call home – destroyed, looted and set on fire.
Now I’m back to Decisions, Decisions.
It’s been proven that the remote work that I’ve been engaged in for over a decade is an acceptable practice.
The relative safety and culture of the city has been deeply compromised and scarred. It may never fully recover. That now holds true for major metropolitan centers around the country. Everyone is hurting. Unemployment is maxed and there are a lot of souls in emotional & financial pain.
Architecture (a lesson learned the last time) is generally the first service that gets cut – and the last to rebound fully… so I’m looking at another emptying of the savings account.
There’s another tangent here worthy of exploration about how to make design more accessible to everyone – and at this point in time – a well-needed discussion, but I’ll have to leave that unexplored – for now.
Left with a popular question these days…
So now what?
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