Articulating anger...and finding a way out

Maybe not a complete way out, but somewhat.

I'm still here, still an architect, and still angry. A recent comment stated "it's not the profession, it's the people." There's a lot of truth in that statement. I think this profession warps people, but it's worse when it warps someone who was already a four-alarm-fire-flaming douche. And it's even worse when it warps a good, sane person and turns them into said type of douche.

I've been continually silent because it feels like everything I have to say is either a) raging against the machine, and b) isn't really an architecture problem but a white-collar worker in 21st-century America problem. I suppose both of those are true, and yet that doesn't make them less important. I'm furious when I watch a group of so-called seasoned design professionals refuse to think futuristically or at least creatively about how they run their businesses and their piece of the profession. And while I can't change that 100% right now, I can do something.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm trying to find ways to articulate my thoughts, suggestions, advice, questions, and general pot-stirring commentary in a succinct manner. I've been undergoing a real change in how I spend my days and energy in the past year, and I still have work to do fixing my 31 Flavors of Shit (especially personally), so I'm trying to figure out how to write without giving myself another task/cross to bear.

But I'm here, with you, and still ultimately feel the same way: it's a good profession, but it's sick, and it CAN get better, if we try.

Still here, still angry

I haven't had much to say lately.  Well, actually, I've had lots to say, but it's all been angry and cranky. I'm still frustrated with my profession. I'm beyond weary of a profession that cuts its own throat by underbidding each other and undercharging for their work. I'm worn out by ridiculous deadlines and horrible communication and poor coordination and at least a hundred other things. I'm still working out how to improve it, or at least my part in it. I'm torn between wanting to tell interns the truth about what I've seen, and knowing that as a upper-level manager at a firm, everything and anything I write on a blog can be held against me.

So thanks for tuning in now and again.  I'm here.

Coming up out of the trough of depression and burnout

All--

I'm so thankful for the occasional but regular comment and cheers I'm getting from you all.  It's been entirely too long since I last posted, and if you all disappeared and started reading other better and more informative architectural blogs, I wouldn't be upset at all.

It's been a long haul since the burnout really kicked in late last summer. The short version of the story is this: After a few months of struggling, weeping in the bathroom at work, and barely able to tolerate other human beings at work, I finally went on antidepressants. The meds began lifting me out of my fog, and a good therapist has been helping me peel back the layers of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that have led me to a place of burnout and hopelessness. I am finally coming up out of the deep underwater trench that is depression and burnout, like a submarine from the Marianas Trench.

Part of my rise from the depths originated in seeing Brene Brown's TED Talks on vulnerability, courage, and authenticity. I read a couple of her books and found that they and her TED Talks resonated deeply with me.  Reading these, going on meds, and committing to  good therapy brought me to a few of my own professional and personal breakdowns...um, I mean, spiritual awakenings:

• Many of the traits and behaviors I've sought to suppress and squelch in myself, and that I've recommended you all suppress and squelch, are actually the things that make  me--and you--interesting and real to others. Sharing my fears, weaknesses, concerns, etc. in a not-too-TMI way can actually inspire and motivate others and get them on my side.
• I've been living unsustainably energy-wise. Writing two blogs, serving on several committees at work, keeping up a speaking gig on the side, and doing almost full-time billable work on projects is unsustainable. Maybe it's my age (I turned 38 in Fall 2013), or maybe it's that all my busyness has kept the depression at bay, but it's time to accept my limits on time and energy. It's also time that I hold those boundaries with others, including my bosses.
• My firm really does like, value, and support me. When I melted down last summer/fall, many of the senior leaders and partners rallied around me and asked "how can we help?" When I just folded in my chair and cried, they just sat with me and said, "Whatever you need, we'll help. We want you here for the long run." When I finally decided what I wanted, they said, "Great, let's do it" and did everything they could to deliver. I've been living my life for nearly 14 years like an intern just out of school trying to prove myself, I didn't realize that I'd already proven myself.

Hopefully I can get back to posting a little more often as I start to feel better. I must admit that so much of what I've written in the past makes me feel like a fraud. Perhaps the truth is closer to a quote by Oprah Winfrey (I know, I know, just indulge me a moment here): "When you know better, you do better." I realize that some of my advice to you all has been from a place of fear and not thoughtful strength, and you all deserve better than that.

Here's to giving you better--and here's to you all, the next generation of architects--demanding better.

Lulu

When it's deeper than burnout

During these weeks (who am I kidding? months) I've been quiet on the interwebs, I came to realize that my apathy comingled with fury was beyond burnout. It became clear even after a long, wonderful vacation with my husband that what I've been experiencing was deeper than burnout--it was full-on, irrefutable, un-ignorable, in-your-face-like-a-can-of-mace depression. A fair amount of October and November were spent adjusting to an antidepressant and letting my coworkers know what was going on with me. Because I do in fact work with human beings, they understood and agreed to help adjust my workload and schedule accordingly.  This wasn't just "Lulu is feeling kinda burned out"; this was now a medical condition that, while it would pass eventually with medication and therapy, it also must legally be accommodated and ethically and emotionally cannot be ignored.

I also spent the fall working on some project process research for the firm for which I work, and I still had to fulfill my managerial duties of participating in staff performance reviews and some HR tasks. These chores kept me busy enough that I didn't feel totally useless and gave me a reason to come to work every day while the lack of serotonin in my brain told me that work was bullshit and life was bullshit and there's no point in anything anyway. Fortunately, I have several amazing and wonderful relatives and coworkers and friends who helped me combat these despondent voices. I cannot thank them enough.

Assembling coherent, helpful blog posts has been tough for me these past few months, and it's still a struggle. While I'm still not done wrestling with this condition, I at least have the clarity to see when my angry apathy is the depression talking versus when it's truly work that has me pissed off. (One sign that it's depression: if I say I hate my job and someone asks what I would rather do instead, and I say "Nothing. Nothing sounds good." That's the lack of serotonin talking.) Things are looking up professionally; I have some professional speaking engagements coming up in the spring, and I'll be working with some different project teams in my office to see if that helps with my mehness. I promised myself I'd try again at this blog. I hope I'm not done trying to help and mentor others wherever I can, but if I've given all I can, then I have to accept that. I've found in the last few months that I was right about some things, and I've been dead wrong about some other things. I hope to have to courage to share these things with you all in 2014.  

Til then, have a lovely holiday season, and here's to a new year.

Lulu

Is there a place for the quiet leader?

Part of the discussions my firm is having about the next ten years involves leadership. Some of the conversations are basic--who's retiring, who's staying, who's advancing or should be advanced, and so on. Some of these conversations are more abstract and revolve around leadership itself. We've had previous discussions about what does it take to reach certain titles in our office, but there's still something lacking, something not quite right about those rules.

Many of our firm's, and indeed our society's, hallmarks of leadership include what might be considered extroverted behaviors and traits. Speaking up (and often), being visible, tooting your own horn, being involved in multiple visible roles, etc. are often considered what it takes to be a "leader" in our culture. But if we are to believe the research presented in Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking (and I do believe it myself), we need quiet, more reserved, and less "out there" leaders as much as we do the social butterfly multitaskers that we've rewarded with leadership roles and power for so long.

I'm often thought of as an extrovert, but the truth is I prefer to work alone or with only one or two more people, and I require a lot of alone time to recover from public speaking and teaching engagements. I consider myself just barely an extrovert, but I also find myself getting louder and more involved and vocal when something really matters to me. Even now while trying to slog through my burnout and get some much-needed rest, I find myself compelled to be involved in these long-range planning efforts going on in my firm right now. This is due in part to the fact that it's something I've wanted to be involved in for a long time, and it's also due to the fact that whenever something needs to be done as part of this planning, there is only a handful of people willing to do it...so it falls into my lap or the lap of one of a few colleagues. Extroversion through coercion, so it seems.

So I do wonder: is there a place for the quiet leader, the monotasker, the thoughtful sage in lieu of the verbose savior? And can architecture make that kind of leader work both in its firms and as its face in society?

Random thoughts on architectural work

I still don't have anything lengthy and coherent to blog, but I have had some musings I thought I'd share. Our firm has been going through some major changes regarding how we manage and treat employees and how we're going to move forward for the next ten years, and the conversations that are causing and are caused by these changes have given me some random insights and/or ideas. (Or maybe they're just brain droppings.)

• Empowerment is a two-way street. Your manager needs to allow you to take something on and run with it and do it without his/her micromanagement or constant supervision. On the other hand, you have to be willing to accept responsibility if/when there are errors and do what it takes to get that task (or part of a project) done.
• If you can't get right what I've given you so far, chances are good that I'm not going to give you new or different stuff to do.
• The farther you go up the ladder at an architecture firm, the less actual architecture you do every day.
• The biggest skill that young architects and interns (as well as the rest of the world) isn't learning before they hit the work world is how to communicate clearly and civilly. Your bosses didn't learn it either, but we have to start somewhere with good communication in the workplace.
• Good communication doesn't mean "always being nice" or never calling people on poor performance. It means that when you do call out bad performance, it's about the performance and not the person.
• Cultural change takes time. Even when an entire organization is on board with changing the way it works, it can still take 3-5 years to see the changes and get them firmly entrenched in daily office culture. It's still worth doing; just be patient.
• "People want change, but people don't want to be changed." --Winston Churchill
• No matter how much you try to help make things better, there are always going to be a few people who aren't going to be happy. It's still worth making things better.
• There are two sides to the happiness at work coin. One side is that you have to be able to do the things you enjoy doing so that you can stand coming to work every day. The other side is that you have to do the crappy stuff sometimes in order to get the job done. Not every day should be a horrible grind, but not every day can be sunshine and flowers.

Update on Lulu, the Duchess of Burnout

First off, thanks to everyone for the kind emails and comments; they're appreciated and I'm thankful that anyone is moved to comment or email at all. Many of my posts go uncommented except for the occasional Anonymous spam comment saying "i much like this and have made bookmarked it" or some other such nonsense. So, thanks again.

To address my burnout, I realized that while I do need some rest, I also do better when I have something to do. I created a project for myself that involved reviewing my office's processes for planning and staffing projects, and my two primary bosses agreed that this would be worth doing.  I'll be working only on this project until late September, at which point I'm going on a two-week trip out of the country for a nice, long vacation. When I return, my bosses and I will assess what I'll be doing next based on how much of my analysis/project I'll be able to finish by the time I leave. 

In the meantime, I've been pondering a variety of professional and personal topics, none of which I can discuss here with any coherency or brevity, but I'm working on it. I've broken a few of my own rules lately, including that I've actually told several of my colleagues and interns/architects about the nature of my burnout.  I've realized that the old "stiff upper lip" behavior in the guise of being "professional" only works to a point in the 21st-century workplace. This is just one of several big shifts I've had in my thinking lately, and it's taking some time to get used to the idea that the way I've worked, acted, and behaved in the past several years may not be serving me well anymore.

Having said all that, I should let you all know that I'm not able to redline any resumes right now. I have received a couple of questions about what to do with some ethical and professional workplace questions, which I'll get to in due time. Thanks again for hanging in there with me, and I hope to get back on track in the next few weeks.

Lulu



(Note: someone asked recently about whether you can include work you've done at your present/previous firm into your own portfolio. I would advise against bringing a lot with you, but photos of the project along with a description of the project would be okay, especially if they're photos you can take yourself or get from an online source, like a web article about the project. Bring photos from your employer as a last resort.  Don't bring plans or details--if you have more than four years' experience, you're supposed to know how to detail stuff, so showing it would be redundant.)