Profession or obsession ?

Have you ever asked yourself if what you have is a profession, or is it more like an OBSESSION? I’m not talking about being a workaholic, no, I’m talking about making your profession a lifestyle, about adopting a point of view and a way of thinking that will accompany you throughout your entire life. I’m talking about having a pure, hateful, loving, and awfully addictive obsession with your profession.

Well I think I do. I even suspect that a profession like architecture inevitably turns you into an obsessive person –that is, if you weren’t already a maniacal freak before you started studying it. And again, I think that my mind may have been a little messed up already before entering the university, he. But what I am certain of is that this past years that I have spent studying architecture have turned me into a more obsessive, maniacal individual than I was before. My eyes have been successfully trained to see certain things, and I’ve developed this sort of sixth sense that makes me perceive and experience everything around me as only an architect can. 

I wonder if this happens with other professions… I wonder if doctors walk around visualizing the muscles and bones and veins of each person that they meet on the street; and if civil engineers think of the load of their car on the highway while they are driving to work. And oh God, what about psychologists? Do they go through everyday life identifying weird conduct disorders in other people, and even worse, in themselves too? (That must be frightening…)

As for me, I have arrived to a horrifying point in which I see a kid playing in the park and I visualize him as a cutout to put on a render in Photoshop. –yeah, it’s weird, I know- But maybe that was just an isolated phenomenon, maybe it was simply because I had spent the last two days photoshping the renders of our final project, maybe it is also because I have just gotten out of the academy –yep that’s right: no more courses for me, finally! - So I guess I’m still used to thinking 24/7 in the project for the design course that kept me busy going to the faculty.

Yeah, maybe it’s just that…But then again, who says that things will change now? On the contrary, now is when things get serious and I have to make –and sell- good architecture in order for me to earn a living, so the odds are that the obsession will only increase.

So maybe…nothing. I’ve got to suck it up and realize that I’ve chosen a path –the path of architecture. Because if it isn’t cutout people for renders, it will be metal beams falling down on my head, or my feet stumbling over a brick, or who knows!

The famous architect Renzo Piano once said: “There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. It’s the art of putting all your energy into one thing; it’s the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.” 

Damn, eating architecture for lunch…Talk about obsession. -But I think I like the idea, sounds kind ‘a fun. In fact, I’ve been craving a chocolate skyscraper for a while now, and I think this may be the perfect time to get it. : )