“Maybe you should do something else”.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had somebody say that to me over the last couple of years. It usually follows a long winded rant on my part about how much the profession sucks, how hard it is to find work, how hard it is to get paid if you do find work and forget about finding good clients.

Here’s the thing that non-architects (and some architects) don’t get, architecture is not a job! It’s a calling. The “mother of all arts” as Wright once said. But lately it’s becoming a job, a means to an end. And as a job, architecture sucks (“When did architecture become a job” http://goo.gl/kwf5e).

But what else to do? Become a real estate broker, computer programmer, writer, teacher, what? What other profession offers creatives who become architects the addictive highs of the creative process?

Granted, the lows associated with the profession are devastating. (that’s why one keeps a bottle of single malt scotch nearby). But we’re all addicts, waiting for that creative fix that trumps everything, that’s makes the world around us disappear. That makes you throw your chest out and say “I’m an architect” when someone asks what you do.

Do something else?

I don’t think so.

I’m an architect.