There is something great about doing nothing.

Every architecture student knows the never-ending mindset whilst engaged in a project and that feeling of unnamed tension just after completing the semester. Your body still tells you that it needs to work on something, it takes a few days for this to wear off, a kind of re-entering into society. And that post state of pure existence is amazing.

Even after “school” is finished, it is not really finished, there is hardly ever a moment to take a breath because there is always a portfolio to do, a new project to familiarize yourself with so you have talking points for others designers. A conference, a lecture, a blog (I know, I know...), and let alone your own personal projects that you want to undertake. Sometimes it can feel like to make yourself visible and important in the discourse you have to be vigilant and unyielding in pursuit of ambition.  I am certainly not arguing for less ambition, great things often start with the most ambitious ideas and people. I suppose it has to do with the advertising and networking that architecture and architects need in order to survive, maybe that is what I am reconciling...

Sometimes it can feel like you can’t do nothing, as if it would be a sin, or reduce socializing and relaxing to doing nothing, which has obvious negative effects. But doing nothing can be exactly what needs to be done sometimes. I have enjoyed more than a few days of doing nothing at the beginning of this summer, and those days feel weirdly fulfilling. They are needed to maintain sanity and remember why you love something in the first place.