I guess I'm just… kinda worried. Like, I'm a junior architect, which is a HUGE deal for me after, well, a long time away from the drawing board. Stayed home with the kids, you know? And it was good, it was, but there's this itch, this thing inside that just needed to BUILD stuff, not just LEGO towers. So I went back, finally got this chance to present my *first* solo design to the senior board, the big wigs. And I'm just… freaking out, honestly.
It’s this building, you know, a sort of community center. I put everything into it. Every late night, every coffee-fueled sketch. But there’s this one part, a bit of the roofline, where the stress calculations felt… a little off. Like, I checked them a million times, truly. And the software says it's fine, totally within code, but there's this gut feeling, this tiny, nagging whisper that it's… not right. That it's a hair’s breadth from being a complete disaster. And if they find it, if they see that ONE flaw, it’s not just the building, it's me. It’s all those years I felt like I lost, all the guilt about wanting more than just being "Mom" again. It’ll just… POOF. Gone. My career, before it even really gets started.
It's silly, I know. My kids are grown, my folks are getting older and need me more, and here I am, worried about a damn roof beam. It’s like, when you get to a certain age, you think you’d be less worried about what people think, but I swear it's WORSE. Because now it feels like my LAST CHANCE, you know? Like this is it. And if I mess it up, I'll never forgive myself. We humans, we put so much weight on these little moments, don’t we? Like one presentation can either make you or break you. And I just don't know if I can take the breaking part, not again. I just want it to be perfect, or at least, not collapse.
Share this thought
Does this resonate with you?