Seven years ago, we were sitting on the concrete pavement in a Buc-ee’s parking lot eating a salad, leaving Houston to our new home of Las Vegas.
Today, I just stamped my first drawing.
Singular. The “set” is just a single sheet demolition plan removing two kitchens at the Desert Regional Center.
If I wanted to make it sound more impressive, I could say the project manual was also stamped. All 28 pages of SPWD boilerplate with 2 pages of technical specifications – 02 41 19, Selective Demolition.
And technically, I actually stamped our home remodel a couple years ago. But anyone is allowed to sign drawings for their own house if they’re the homeowner.
So this is the first time that “counts”.
It’s not much, but hey it has been twenty years in the making. I’m going to do my victory lap.
I saw a post complaining about the lack of free time after working, cooking, cleaning, and exercising, even as a single person. So I decided to do some math.
Hmm interesting….
55 hours for a full time gig (factoring in a quick 1hr breakfast / morning routine, 1hr lunch, and 1hr commute)*
15 hours for six meals cooked at home (if you cook from scratch I don’t see how you would spend less than 2.5hrs cooking-eating-cleaning. Also I’m defining “often” as more than half of eleven meals – five dinners during the week and six during the weekend)
8 hours for the other five meals not eaten at home (a little more than an 1.5hrs each, including travel)
3 hours of exercise (CDC recommends 150 minutes per week)
56 hours for sleep (CDC recommends 7hrs or more for adults per night so 8hrs to include an evening routine)
4 hours for cleaning (this one seems a little short, but let’s go with a small apartment for a minimalist, so we’ll say it’s half a workday.)
That list totals up to 141 hours out of the 7×24 = 168 hours in a week.
This leaves 27 hours (or 1,620 minutes) to enjoy your off time. It’s odd number that feels simultaneously small and expansive….and I just spent 30 minutes writing this post!
*footnote: I am of the belief that a 40 hour week gig will only maintain your current position in life. If you have dreams of advancement, add another 8 hours for honing your skills – either at the company or on your own….so now we’re down to 19 hours of free time in a week.
**footnote: If you have young kids throw all this out the window. Hmm, maybe I should do this for myself….some other time!
In 1998-99, I had worked closely with him as an editor of Process, a Journal of Student Work. The books were eventually printed but it was a good lesson in how bleeping hard it is to get anything done. Indeed, it was such a painful experience that I had of blocked it out of my memory, but as I write, I can pinpoint this experience as the beginning of my Project Management career.
A year later (two decades ago from this year), I came back from spring break to find out he had committed suicide. It was utterly devastating. So devastating that I roped in a couple friends to do Process a second time. Which was yet again a grinding experience that overshadowed my senior year in college. I doubt it was a very good idea to volunteer for such pain and suffer, but in retrospect it was most likely good to do it twice, to learn that experience will make things a little easier, but not much easier.
The biggest payoff from this second run is that I became close to my two fellow editors over that crazy year, and I still telephone one of them every month or so. I’d say any effort that nets you something like that for the next 20 years is pretty damn good.
In any case, I spent yesterday morning looking up the grad student who had passed away in 2000. The internet now claims maybe he isn’t dead. It is a bit odd, because he has managed to have zero digital footprint, except for an award nomination in 1999, an exhibition announcement from 1998, and in the meeting minutes of some planning commission that noted he had passed away in 2000.
This wasn’t a man who could have laid low for twenty years. I suspect the internet is mixing up two people….but maybe not.
Even though I’m generally quite proud of my internet searching skillz, I’ve hit the end of the line – at least without spending a little money or significant time.
So I’ll try again in 2030. If the dude is alive but wants to stay deceased, I should respect his will for at least another decade. If he’s actually dead, there should be more free information available in the internet to confirm this loss.
And as a final little nugget, here is a photo myself (from 2006) that I came across while trawling through old emails. This had nothing to do with him, but I wanna post it somewhere!
I still have the wacom tablet at work, and I’m using that mouse right now on my desk.
This morning, I got sidetracked and watched a series of music videos. I’m not sure if there is much significance to this list, aside from the fact I’m quite fond of them, with the middle three being some of the best music videos I’ve ever seen.
On Monday, I heard that local artist Alexander Huerta had passed away.
It was crushing.
He was one of the first people I met in Vegas. My wife and I went to the Arts district for a first Thursday, his studio was open, and we had a long conversation that night. I was taken by his Vintage Urban pieces on black scratch board, as well as his earlier, brilliant explosions of color. For the past seven years, I’ve followed his work with its twists and turns. Always unique, he never settled.
But beyond the paintings, I deeply respected him. He told me of his first life as an alcoholic, and how he discovered painting on his own. Painting saved his life…and so thoroughly enriched ours.
Life and kids got in the way so I didn’t get to hang out with him very often, but every time I’d drive by his second story studio on Charleston, I’d think of him. More often than not, his window was open. He was legit. He put in the work.
He was a pillar in this small town, an institution who showed up every day and gave us his true art.
Dude. I miss you.
Coda. A groundbreaking ceremony was held at Nevada State College for their new School of Education building this Wednesday. One of his pieces is displayed on the third floor of the Roger’s Student Center. It was comforting to say hello before and after the event. He left us some great work, but damn I’d rather he stayed.
Given the guests on the podcast with the same name, I went ahead and borrowed EntreLeadership from the library. The book is a simple, quick enjoyable read.
Admittedly, I’ve never run a business and have no intention to do so in the future. However the book seems like it could be a good primer spanning for a would be entrepreneur, even if much of the topics are covered elsewhere (such as Covey’s 4 quadrants, or Ziglar’s 7 spoke Wheel of life).
However there is one piece of advice that did not sit well with me. He proudly flaunts his “no gossip” policy, which is a fireable offense. It seemed odd to me, so I slipped onto the internet and came across the Daily Beast expose on his exceedingly heavy handed leadership practices.
Then it all snapped in focus. This is a man who has been the boss so long he has forgotten what it is like to be an employee. He has no idea that his position as the founder and owner is a singular one. His perspective is applicable only to himself.
Just flip one of his other exhortations around. He wants each of his employees to act like entrepreneurs. So if I’m running my own little freelance gig, shouldn’t I talk with my fellow freelancers about market conditions? Shouldn’t I make sure that my primary client is treating me fairly? Shouldn’t I “gossip”?
I get that employees should not waste their time bellyaching at the break room. It is better if they bring up concerns to their management so the problems can be fixed. However, that type of trust is earned, not demanded.
This writer has been boss so long, he has mistaken great culture with a populace that has been cowed into submission. And that too is a classic mistake entrepreneurs make.
I just read an interesting statistic. Employment at architectural firms nationwide dropped from 224,500 to 184,600. That means 39,900 jobs were lost in about four months. More than 1 in 6 architects were laid off.
I was one of the lucky ones. I had gotten a gig with a small firm at the start of 2008, so I avoided being laid off even though my hours were cut down to 30 a week. Even though my bank account was not happy, I used the extra time to take my exams.
But still, when you see your colleagues losing jobs and scrambling for work, it leaves an imprint.
Ultimately, we’re all freelancers.
Bosses that preach “family” might not like to hear it. Unless you to throw a child out of your home every time things get rocky, such proclamations ring hollow.
I recently went on a Kaizen kick borrowing all the books on this subject from the library.
Most were straightforward business books from the mid to late 90’s, before the malaise that hit Japan and mad the subject less of a juicy marketable subject.
But One Small Step Can Change Your Life, by Dr. Maurer, was an interesting self help book where the main premise is that very small steps can ultimately be very fruitful, hence the title. It is a very optimistic book, with quite a few examples from both business and historical lore as well as personal interactions by the author.
Like any self help book, it is a persuasive hamburger – it starts and ends by selling you on the effectiveness of of the topic with a multiple steps process in the body of the text.
In this case, you are given a primer on kaizen as a business practice and then some examples on how this approach can be applied to one’s personal life. This book’s six-point program consists of:
Ask Small Questions
Think Small Thoughts
Take Small Actions
Solve Small Problems
Bestow Small Rewards
Identify Small Moments
And then it closes with a reminder that kaizen is good for both for changing course on bad habits (or jumpstarting inactivity) as well as stacking gains on top of previous successes.
The basic premise is that sustainable change comes from small steps that are consistently applied over a long period of time. This stands in contrast to the “innovation” or bootcamp mentality – which are banking on shocks to the system to make lasting change.
The issue with the drastic change approach is that sometimes the system will often bend but snap back into place – the inertia is too much. Kaizen is small so it is immediately actionable, and it entails such small steps that the recalcitrant system doesn’t know what hit it.
Coincidentally, I listened to a podcast about meditation and one of the suggestions for creating a practice is to just aim to meditate for 1- minute every day. While such a goal may seem ridiculously paltry, it creates a habit and it creates opportunities where you decide to meditate for more than a minute. While the decision to go an extra minute may also seem miniscule, the podcaster noted this choice was actually quite momentous. That first minute is motivated by an extrinsic factor (your previous commitment to meditate for a minute every day) but the second minute is voluntary and motivated by intrinsic factors now that your obligation has been satisfied.
This seems to me to encapsulate the spirit of this book. Make a small step and the ride the wave to continuous improvement.
I was going through a bevy old photos that had been stuck on a sundry of devices and found this old shot.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular photo has already been uploaded here. But I thought I’d post it again as a reminder at how quickly four years has passed.
One day you’re halfway through the decade, and in a blink of the eye you’re thinking about writing a retrospective on your blog.
