I’m sitting in my car in the parking garage and the engine is still running because I don’t think I can actually move my arms yet. I feel like such a colossal piece of garbage. Have you ever had that thing where you’re supposed to be sad for someone you really, truly care about, but instead your brain is just doing backflips because of something good that happened to you? It’s like this weird emotional dissonance... I think that’s the term? I’m literally vibrating with this manic energy and I spent the last three hours pretending I was on the verge of a breakdown because my mentor, Elias, was having a real one right in front of me. Elias is the reason I’m even a semi-competent architect. He’s the one who taught me how to actually read a site's topography and not just trust whatever the software spits out. He’s like my work-dad, honestly. But tonight we were at this crappy bar near the office because we’d been pushing through a deadline for the civic center project, and he just... snapped. He started going off about how architecture is a "hollow pursuit for the vain" and how he’s fifty now and has nothing to show for it but a bunch of LEED-certified boxes and a second divorce. And he’s looking at me with these bloodshot eyes, basically begging me to agree that our entire field is a total scam. And the thing is... this morning, the partners pulled me into the corner office. They told me I’m lead on the new boutique hotel renovation downtown. Like, FULL LEAD. My drawings, my vision, my name on the bottom of the sheets in the title block. I’ve been waiting for this since I was twenty-two and struggling through my thesis. It’s the first time I won’t just be some faceless CAD monkey. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run through the halls and throw my laptop in the air like a graduation cap. But then Elias pulled me aside for "drinks" and I had to put on my "somber funeral face" for four hours. So I’m sitting there, right? At this sticky table that smells like old beer, and he’s talking about the "existential dread of the built environment" and how we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And I’m nodding, and I’m making these little sympathetic noises, but in my head? In my head I am literally drafting the curtain wall details. I’m thinking about how the light is going to hit the atrium at 4 PM in July. I’m thinking about the specific sheen of the blackened steel we should use for the staircase. I’m totally checked out of his actual pain because I’m so OBSESSED with this win. Is that like... a pathological lack of empathy? I feel like I should be worried that I can watch a man I respect fall apart and my primary concern is whether or not I can convince the client to go with the more expensive glazing. He was literally crying into his Macallan about how he missed his daughter’s birthday for a site visit back in 2014 and I was just like, "Yeah, man, that’s rough," while secretly calculating the square footage of the lobby in my head. I’m a monster. I’m actually a monster. I keep trying to feel bad for him, but it’s like my brain is stuck in this feedback loop of PURE HYPE. He kept saying things like, "Don't let this job eat you alive, kid," and "Get out while you still have a soul." And I’m just sat there, like, performing this role of the disillusioned protege. I felt like I was wearing a mask that was starting to itch. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to be like, "Elias, I’m actually HAVING THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE," but how do you say that to someone who’s basically telling you their whole life is a failure? You can’t. You just have to sit there and absorb their misery so they don’t feel alone. It felt like some kind of weird psychological masochism. And now I’m home—well, in the driveway—and I’m terrified that if I go inside and see my partner, I’m just going to burst. I haven't even told them yet. I’ve been holding this secret in all day like a physical weight in my chest. I have this desperate need to CELEBRATE, but I feel like if I do, I’m somehow betraying Elias. Like if I’m happy about my career, I’m proving him wrong or mocking his regret. It’s this stupid zero-sum game in my head. If I win, he loses more? That’s not how it works, I know that, but it feels so heavy. I just keep thinking about that staircase. The hotel one. I have this vision for it that’s so clean, so... brutalist but warm, you know? It’s going to be beautiful. And I hate that I’m more excited about a piece of steel and glass than I am worried about a human being’s mental health. Maybe this is what the job does to you. Maybe Elias is right and I’m already starting to turn into one of those people who values the aesthetic over the actual life lived inside it. I’m thirty-one years old and I’m choosing a floor plan over a friend. God, I need to go upstairs and sleep but I know I’m just going to stay up and look at site photos until the sun comes up. I'm just... I'm a mess.