The Big Question.

image by Laura Graham

It started a couple of weeks ago, the question floating in and out of my head when I woke up in the morning and stifling it by rolling over and going back to sleep. The list of things that I want to do on a daily basis is so long that even if I could afford to retire right now – I probably wouldn’t manage to get it all completed. I’m far from bored, but that isn’t it. I ask myself, “What am I going to do today?” but even the most detailed plans seem insufficient. Even when completed the chores and projects I’ve filled my days with don’t seem to be contributing to that greater purpose. It’s that greater purpose that’s riding me again, that wants defining and direction. What am I going to do with myself? (and more to the point – am I moving forward?)

To be exact, I’m working a couple of days a week at a pastry shop learning about and serving up a slew of tasty treats. I love it. It’s hard work but it’s very fulfilling (and a little filling). 8.5 hours never went by so quickly in a cubicle or in a shopping mall or even as a waitress. Everything from my hips down ache when I get home and take my shoes off. But technically, I’m still unemployed. It’s been just over 7 months since I left the once booming world of architecture and started this rather slow journey.

And now that I’m here, let’s talk a little bit about that architectural career I’m supposed to be developing. It’s just not happening. The chance of getting an architecture job at the moment, this year, the beginning of next year, is so slim that if it were a medical condition you’d be getting your will together. Not a single person in my age group that I know that has been laid off in the past 10 months from the architectural field (including interior design) has picked up another comparable job in the field. It’s a cold and very hard truth, but that’s where we are.

So what do I do? Wait it all out? Pursue another passion? Go home and live with my parents till I find a sugar daddy that bankrolls me till he kicks it and leaves me his millions? (okay, maybe not the last one.) I find myself caught in between. Up until now I’ve kept my ear to the architectural ground, and kept myself busy with an internship, design competition, and freelance artwork. Unfortunately none of that will singularly support me while I wait for something to happen. On the other hand, I’m not yet in the position to go out and start my own design business, which is what I’d really love to do.  If only I’d been saving up since high school.

It’s amazing how stagnancy on a chosen career track can completely derail one’s sense of purpose. As if your career alone is the defining point of your life. How is an architect really any better than a pastry chef as long as the bills are getting paid?

I don’t have an answer. I’m going to have to come up with one soon though. Chances are it’s not going to be one that I really want, and one that will probably disappoint my family, but what are my choices? Unless things turn around soon (they won’t – don’t think for a moment that they will) or an architecture job materializes out of thin air I don’t expect to be in that boat for a long time coming.  I don’t really want to make that appointment with the temp agency and spend my days behind a telephone at a plastic container warehouse in West Philly either. Is it really so terrible then to spend my days making and designing cakes and cookies and sugar paste roses? Designing coordinating stationery with a new cake design? Planning and coordinating desserts with a Thanksgiving table layout? Is it okay to just be doing something that makes me happy even if it wasn’t part of the plan? And what if I can move forward and figure out a way to make that work? Sooner or later I’m going to have to leave the fence behind.