mutatis mutandis

A subtle change is happening. I feel it most during those incoherent hours between sleep and wakefulness, vast and vacuous moments of apathy to the world that pepper and interject my days, and sometimes nights. They mingle and trickle beneath the seemingly bland normalcy (if, one could imprecisely classify it as such). It may be a harbinger of something more pervasive, invasive and assertive that has yet to find fruition. So far, this paradigm shift is neither malevolent nor malignant, at least to my knowledge.

I have been writing recently, though quite sporadic, about the harrowing state of my professional life. Usually an amalgamated vomit of anxiety, disgust, indignation and irate bitching, it renders my dissatisfaction with the situation at the workplace brazenly apparent. Completely disheartening is the lethargic tiptoeing of our management in enforcing any form of upgrade, improvement or solution towards alleviating the rather sordid condition of various factors – equipment, software, the prevalence of micro-managing practices, the refusal to conduct structured, comprehensive and legitimate training and mentoring of any sort, the lack of engagement and sense of pride for our work, the absence of any form of cooperation and esprit de corps, and the dismal and incommensurate compensation. To summarize, it has a pervasive and invasive culture of mediocrity.

Often, time at work is synonymous with the rattling homogeneity of the urban white noise. Surrounding, and enveloping me in its dismally hypnotic trance of deadlines, copious amounts of enforced unnecessary pressure, claustrophobic micromanagement practices, and the unhealthy sprinkling of quisling office politics; crustacean mentality at its worst. For most of the time, I have taken this absurd inequity with a grain of salt, relegating this situation as a professional necessity, a circumstantial cross one must unwillingly bear out of detrimental need. But I do love my job, and the opportunity it affords on a daily basis to express creativity, and to create expressive design.

As I have mentioned on a previous post, I have recently begun taking review classes in preparation for the upcoming architecture licensure examination this January. It is a herculean task that is both overwhelming in its immense scope - both theoretical and applicative studies of architecture as a science, art, and profession), as well as triggering an anxious and unsettling excitement of being finally legitimately of the title architect. I cannot even attempt to explain the sizeable material I intend to study, but allow me to try in dimensional terms; imagine a stack of long bond paper-size documents, 12 inches (1 foot) high, and multiply it by three, that is how much physical material (so far, that I have amassed) that I need to read, comprehend, retain, and command. In addition to this, there are also gigabytes worth of digital files, documents, presentations, and resources to digest and ingest just the same.

Yet, despite of the immensely daunting task at hand, I find myself more and more looking forward to the review classes, and our brief quizzes, to the expanses of silence I plunge into as I pour over with focus and dedication upon the review materials and documents I must, detrimentally, absorb, comprehend and internalize. So much so, that I am beginning to value it more than my work. My daily ration of deadlines and design-cum-creative solution-seeking is appearing rote and lackluster, dreary and uninspired in comparison. The shift is in both disposition and preference. That despite my love for the work that I do, I am beginning to resent the situation in the workplace, that I am starting to look forward more to the review classes, which is thrice a week and only in the evenings, than I do the time I spend at work. That work is becoming a mere means to fund my ongoing journey towards professional accreditation. I surmise it has something to do with the gravity and long-term value of the undertaking, but more of the brewing disdain towards the work environ that is fast transitioning into indifference.

I hope to remain effective and insightful at my job, emphasis on job (instead of a career) but the continual myopia of the superiors to the homogeneity of the type and form of tasks encumbered to me is contributing to this general malaise of boredom and the dissipation of a previously present fascination with the work that I do. It is plausible that this paradigm shift, or rather a perception realignment, is condescension fed by the absolute disparity between need and necessity, and want and desire. That it is absolutely imperative for me to enrich my knowledge of design and the process and practice of it, something that up to now I was simply denying its absence in the workplace. But If I am to remain relevant and valuable, I must accept the fact that in any profession, there are certain crosses one must inevitably carry, and often it has nothing to do with the work.

They say that architects are natural arbiters.

If this is true, I must be becoming one.

Original image from here.

Mutatis Mutandis, Lat. "changing [only] those things which need to be changed" further expounded in a Wikipedia article here.