It is 2011, the most important year of my life... so far.
My birthday is approaching, in approximately two weeks. I am rounding the corner of my twenties, and climbing the ladder to the age of twenty-six. The big 2-6. While meaningless to some, I have an extraordinary admiration for time, and those who “know” me would butt-in at any given moment of this blog stating loud and clear, “she was born in the wrong era.” Thus I am constantly a little ahead and a little behind myself, an extreme observant in the greatest abstract manner.
Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years—all of these represent time, which standardizes the measure of a lifetime. Time is typically measured by success, failure, process, durability, and I could go on and on, but I won’t (because this is all relative, and I’d probably go on a tangent about my love for Bob Dylan and Maya Lin, that’s for another day). Approach to time has become this phenomenon in so many societies, and a personal struggle of my own. At the end of 2007, I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life, I doubted myself. This is the time that my family experienced the hardship of losing a loved one. After succeeding in to my senior year of college at The Art Institute of Tampa, and well on my way to graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Interior Design, I withdrew from the college, and withdrew from my closest group of friends. I fell in to a depression, one that my family/friends did not understand, because I did not want pity and I did not want to explain, anything. I fell off the universe.
Within a span of 3 years, I succeeded to become a severe work horse, and sneak off to book stores to devour any design magazine I could get my hands on, preferably Wallpaper, Architectural Digest, and Contract. I woke up every single day looking at the objectified world around me, thinking “I cannot live without design, how do I get back to the forum where I belong, I know I can do this…” It took a series of critically traumatic events after 3 years, to finally pick up the phone in December of 2010 and say with courage, I am back. And, I am! I’m back, and proud (add in: also, scared out of my wits) of myself for getting back on route. I will graduate in December of 2011, and it doesn’t stop there.
The approach I have is anything but simple. I want to retain the education I have earned and put it towards not the world of design but the design of the world (Bruce Mau is a notable influence). This notion is to explore my future potential as a licensed Interior Designer, Architect, Writer and/or Urban Planner. I admire what it takes to take time and space in its most minimalist form, and apply it with a holistic standard moral code, one that includes the welfare, health, safety, functionality, and maintainable qualities. These attributes make up the good in our world, and highlight the opportunities. These things keep us grounded, and show us what to strive for.
Looking back to my first years of college, I remember one of the very first things I was told about my profession: every interior space has one common characteristic: Approach/Entry. The time for my approach is now. Time is now, on my side. Yes it is.
