In another lifetime, before I stupidly heeded the advice of people who said, "You're so good at fixing computer problems, you should do it for a living," I was an architectural drafter. I'd been doing it professionally for about 19 years until one day burnout descended and I reached the point where I didn't care any more if commercial toilets were spaced at 2'-6" or at 2'-8" on center. (FYI, there are whole government agencies and regulations devoted to that very issue.) I hung up my scales, adjustable triangles, mechanical pencils, drafting brushes and electric erasers and said, "Enough." (To be honest, at that point it was actually more of a simple matter of walking away from AutoCAD. Those other tools had been sitting pretty much unused for the better part of a decade.)
But within a few short years, I came the realization that for all my mad troubleshooting skills, my new career as a I.T. professional was really devoid of any true satisfaction. Yeah, it was fun to figure stuff out and fix the shit, but dealing with the constant whining from the willfully ignorant day in and day out has only grown more and more tiresome as time has passed. And no matter how many times I would have to redraw something because a client didn't know what he wanted until he saw what he didn't, when I was intimately involved in the architectural field I felt like I'd accomplished something at the end of the day. When the fruits of my labors were finally built—even if they weren't my own designs—I felt tremendous pride in knowing that I had contributed to something tangible and worthwhile.
There's none of that in I.T. support. It's been my experience these past 14 years or so that you're viewed—and treated—as a necessary evil by most companies and I often describe my profession as changing diapers and making sure that no one's sippy cup is ever knocked over.
But every now and then I get the rare opportunity to put my old skills back in use. The company where I'm currently working has a workable floor plan of the main offices in Visio that we use to maintain seating charts, but they had nothing for the Colorado Springs office. One of my long-term projects was to remedy this, and my daily workload has finally slowed enough where it was practical to begin this project.
To that end, last Friday I spent the day hiding out at our satellite office, amazed that I still knew how to properly measure a building.
Even more amazing was discovering yesterday that I still knew enough AutoCAD to actually translate all my measurements into a working drawing! It really is like riding a bicycle. As long as I didn't think about it too much, my fingers almost knew instinctively what commands needed to be entered, even if the version of the program I was using was several generations removed from the one I'd originally mastered.
And you know, yesterday was one of the best days I've had in years while at work.
I know my general architectural knowledge is a little rusty, and it did take me an entire day to create a single floor plan, but I'm toying with the idea of seeing what would be involved in getting back into architecture and abandoning all this PC troubleshooting bullshit.
Unfortunately, as long as the economy is in the toilet, there isn't enough new construction happening to make this fantasy a reality. But a boy can dream…
Well, here in southern california, the most active construction projects seem to be new apartment buildings closer into the center of the metro area. Interesting field where creative floorplans are a way of life, based on the size and shapes of the lots, and style and color vary all over the place.
As to home remodeling, well, that is way too competitive and nepotism abounds.
Industrial and office design tends too much toward cookie-cutter, same old, same old.
What sector would be your preference?
Congratulations on finding something buried in there that still makes you tick.
As for the PC support, I wonder how different the world would be if people had to maintain and fix their own dang tools.