four years later

Blogging seemed to just be a phase for a lot of people, but now blogging (rather, influencing) has sort of become the norm. I used to write a lot about introspective things, things that were highly emotionally charged, things that I loved (music mostly), photography and art. How far I've come!

LIVING
I'm living in Melbourne now, comfortably set up and I can't imagine living anywhere else.

SCHOOLING
I've finished my Bachelor in Architectural Design and now I'm nearing the end of my year out, working full time at a well-known Melbourne architecture practice.

RELATIONSHIPS
I'm engaged (!) as of a few months ago. I've fallen away from most of my friends in Sydney, and I have made a lot of good friends in Melbourne, both at uni and outside of uni. Most of my socialising is done at work. This year has been tricky - B and I have been living in the Dandenong Ranges, so socially, we have been quite restricted.

I'm pretty happy with my life at the moment. I was trying to search up my old blogs to see if I could actually access blogs I used to maintain. I miss the feeling of writing and reflecting, and I have missed out on having a record of thoughts and feelings that were so immediate at some point in my past, yet so distant now.

I would like to resume this act of recording, more so as a benchmark for myself to look back on in the future to see the things that I was thinking about.

GHOST

Do you ever have a memory that suddenly comes over you, and after that moment, you can't help feeling like you'd rather be back there than where you are now?

Smells, sights, sounds.

I'd rather be in that cabin on the Great Ocean Road.

STUFF AND FLUFF

My room is in a state of chaos at the moment, and I'm in my last couple of days of living here until I go to Sydney for the holidays, then go overseas for a month and a bit, and then come back to B's house, temporarily or for more longterm. Going away for two months and leaving this house at the same time, all loose ends must be tied up.

I came to Melbourne last October with one big suitcase and a bursting backpack. Over several visits to Sydney and back, I've brought over more of my belongings - clothing, objects, documents, fluff. Buying furniture and odds and ends to pad my room out even more, to make it feel more me.

Having gotten a fair way into packing up, I can see now that I've got a lot of stuff. My room no longer feels like my place to stay in Melbourne. Even with all of my belongings displaced and arranged into boxes upon boxes, this room still feels mine.

HARD WORK NEVER FAILS?

Hard work never fails.

This is a good thing to be reminded of frequently. In hindsight, looking back at recent achievements, hard work is something that you can never regret. Hard work is always appreciated in hindsight, rarely ever in the moment, and in architecture school, this moment may look very, very, very bleak. One can only hope that the hard work that they are struggling through will eventually pay off.

Hard work for what reason?

I was asking myself this question earlier today after reading a Thanksgiving Facebook post from a mutual friend about risking stability and livelihood in a mindless hospitality job, diving into his passion for photography with a year of contacting people asking for work, and reaching the stage where he is now being asked for his photography and travelling to provide his services around the world. Good on him, good on all freelancers, for taking the risk and working hard to make it worth it.

In this case, it seems that the goal of this hard work - to become a viable freelancer - has been driven by the desire for autonomy and to have a genuine love for the work he is doing. I would say that the 'proper' reason as to why one should work hard in school is for personal development, however, students who put in hard work genuinely to improve themselves and their design skills seem to be a rarity.

I feel like the competitive environment in architecture schools leads people to focus on things that in the long run, aren't very important. Working hard to please your tutor, working hard to avoid the shame of presenting unfinished work in studio, working hard to have a solid portfolio when applying for an architecture job. From what I've noticed, the trope of "it's all about connections (and communications)" is all too familiar, and among ambitious students, there is an unspoken competition of who-knows-who, internships, and internships-where?.

Perhaps I am a bit shortsighted. Perhaps it's me who sees a rivalry when I should be focussing on working on myself (again, always something I should remember). When it comes down to it, I'm not sure what makes the exertion and sacrifice associated with architecture schools worth it, or whether there is any 'right' reason for it. I don't know whether the career focus in architecture schools, or at least among students, is healthy (I don't think it is though). The crux of any education should be self-development, but perhaps it's idealistic of me to think that.