I ended up with 2.5 jobs. I’ll be doing 40 hours a week for the Building Project, hopefully relaxing interior cabinetry work and not climbing on our matte black metal roof. When I’m not doing BP, sleeping, eating, or on the pot I’ll be doing freelance work for some professors, namely painting a basement and working on the drawings for a house addition in New Haven. This is sort of crazy but it works out in Google Calendar so blow it, I’m going to have a try. I mourn the bloody death of my summer but this is the way adults roll—this way I won’t have that dirty, guilty feeling that comes from having fun and enjoying myself for extended periods of time.
There’s one thing I’m worried about, which is that I’m digging my New England hole deeper. On the one hand, my establishment architecture school is slowly brainwashing me into thinking that the hottest, most boutique firms are all somewhere between New York and Boston, and that the best thing possible would be to add to my East Coast network and subscribe to The New Yorker and buy a golden retriever named Ollie and get a nice compound in Hyannisport and stay here for the rest of my life. On the other hand, I sort of want to get the holy hell back to California, the part of the country that didn’t originate 200 years ago as a strange growth on Cornelius Vanderbilt’s butt.* Taking jobs here adds to scenario one—I’m getting adverse to starting over again and again—and yet how can I refuse?
*It’s really just the food and the snow.
[Russell Davies: How to be interesting.]
I’ve realized my problem with small talk: usually, I’m just not interested.
The office means lots of “opportunities” for small talk: at the loo, in the elevator, at lunch, at the bus stop, on the way in, on the way out. I don’t like all this comfort conversation. It’s contrived. The complaining and empty questions, the sum fluff makes my life feel empty and routine. A good conversation doesn’t fit into five minutes and it doesn’t come every day, especially when we all have the same soul-draining late-night corporate job.
Mia: “Don’t you hate that?”
Vincent: “What?”
Mia: “Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it’s necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?”
Vincent: “I don’t know. That’s a good question.”
Mia: “That’s when you know you’ve found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.”
So, a friend of My Fellow American Intern visited over the week; I met up with them and had pepper and chili crab, watched Volver, went to the St. James Powerhouse, blah blah blah.
Here’s the scoop: he’s an intern at Pelli Clarke Pelli (Petronas Towers, &c), working a typical 60-70 hours a week. So far so same, except for one thing: with overtime, he makes over $1000 a week! Holy freakin’ disposable income, Batman!
I mean, first of all, he gets paid overtime, which is a lot more than my current overtime rate of “nothing.” Second of all, he makes in one week what I make in five.
I never thought it was possible to get salary envy in architecture, the most shittily-paid among regularly glamorized office jobs, but here I am, oh-quite-very envious.
(Yes yes, I know, life is unfair, news at 11.)
From sunrise to sunset, we all get the same amount of time. Yeah, obvious, but it puts humanity in perspective—the challenge in life is to take those identical minutes and do more. My day has the same number of minutes as Coppola’s and Brion’s, as Jobs’ and Clooney’s, as Koolhaas’ and Obama’s. Clearly they know how to use their time better than I do.
Sitting around the office, I’ve realized that’s exactly what my bosses are doing. Sure, they get more money when their job titles are acronyms. But, more importantly, instead of doing the tedious repetitive crap themselves, they get other people to do that for them. Instead of getting one project done every few months, they’re getting ten projects done by proxy.
A boss extends his own time by paying other people to give him their time. It’s just like jacking everyone’s cash and suddenly being able to buy a Ferrari.
That’s how we mere mortals can do more with our lives—get promoted into a corner office and fight quality with quantity.
Two days ago, an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan severed cables responsible for 60%+ of Asia’s Internet capacity. For the past two days, I haven’t had reliable access to any website outside Singapore.
Coincidentally, the past two days have been the most productive I’ve ever had… in my entire life. I mean, I’ve listened to “Dick in a Box” at least 35 times so far.
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