Prime Real Estate Beside the Road Not Taken

Whatever happened to the innocent idealistic architecture students we were, or at least we thought we were, back in our college days?

Chances are that some of us are unemployed right now or in jobs that somehow have nothing to do with the diploma we had slaved to earn.

A minority who maybe can afford to, who maybe are just plain smarter than the rest of us mortals, or who maybe just can't find a job that they like or who can't find a job at all; have probably opted to go into further studies.

The "lucky ones" who are now working in architectural offices get another chance to continue their underpaid insomniac existence after doing the same in college and, if there is a god, one of them might actually be happy.

However crooked or long the road that our chosen profession may be, granted that we still have the desire to pursue this profession and have not yet joined the multitude who have slipped through the cracks, the end is still the same: somehow, someway, someday a light shall turn on in our heads and we will all realize that the architecture that had seduced us so effectively before is nothing but an illusion.

Architecture, the real one, the one that we had hoped to make a living out of and bring food to the table is an entirely different animal. A very dangerous and viscious animal.

This realization is a bit traumatic and, as all traumatic processes are apt to go, it spins us through denial, anger and ultimately acceptance. Of course some people would not reach the acceptance stage at all. These people are usually the ones who quit or have simply lost it and have traded in their wardrobe for a cozy pair of strait jackets to keep them warm from bonechilling reality.

Those who do find the path to acceptance now come towards a fork in the road of their lives standing by the spot where the road splits, scratching their heads and asking questions that just give birth to more questions.

Have I been fooled all this time? Have we been systematically made jackasses by society? All the architects in the movies were all so happy, rich, and lead such interesting lives so why not me? Why can't I be Howard Rourke? Why can't I be Frank Lloyd Wright?

Well you're still standing where the road diverges. Hopefully it is at this time where you remember a certain poem by Robert Frost and the lessons he imparts in it – that there are times when decisions are not easy to make. We cannot go two ways at once, we have to decide which road to take. Some roads are well travelled, others are not. Whatever decisions we make or road we travel will make all the difference both in our lives and in the lives of others.

So do you take the one on the left or the one on the right? The safe job or the risky job? The indigent path of sound moral and ideals or the gold laden road of cut throat brass tacts. The chicken or the egg? Decisions, decisions.......

There's no simple answer really. Nothing is really black and white in the world nowadays. All I can do is hope that when we do face these types of decisions in our lives that we shall all be very professional about it. After all, roads really aren't our thing. Building is.

Maybe not taking a path would be okay. Maybe just stopping by where we are and building a house there wouldn't be so bad. A house, two houses, three houses, a village......

Two roads diverged and by god, where that road split, that's one piece of prime property if I ever saw one!

As I began this piece with a question I think it is only appropriate that I end it with another question like book ends flanking a row of self indulgent romance novels.

I wonder what's happening to the innocent idealistic architecture students in college right now?