selophane.blog » Unemployment

Home Owners Associations and Condo Boards – are they preventing small business recovery?

spencer — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:50:43 +0000

I think I may have a reason why this recovery is floundering, and it all has to do with housing. Now stay with me a second, this is not subprime loans, nor predatory markets, or anything else that has already been blamed, this is a simple shift in how America lives and how that has affected our abilities to innovate and recover. Yes, I am talking about the shift from single family residences to Condo and Town home living, and the lovely association rules that come with both of those housing styles. Last year, when I decided to start my own architecture firm (studiosml.com) I, like many prospective small business owners, hit upon a major stumbling block – my condo association bylaws. Specifically, they prohibit operating any business out of your unit. At the time, this felt like just another hurdle to get over, but now that I’ve had some distance and i’ve wathced our slow recovery, I have to wonder whether rules like this are impedeing others as well. Let me explain. I wanted to start my architecture firm, and at least in the beginning, operate it out of my house. This is one of the very common and traditional [...]

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Home Owners Associations and Condo Boards – are they preventing small business recovery?

A catch 22

spencer — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:37:01 +0000

So I’ve been on the job market since February; in that time, I’ve applied for over 175 different positions. Some of these have been outside of the world of architecture, while most have been with architecture practices. I can see the writing on the wall, the architecture industry is changing and until it finds its new face there are not going to be many new positions out there working for other people. This is one of the reasons I’ve started my own residential design firm, studioSML, with a good friend of mine. On one hand we have the dream of working for ourselves, but on the other we are trying to be realists and understand that it is very likely that we will not bring in enough money to be self sufficient for years. This means that we both need full time positions elsewhere, and not just temporary ones. We are looking for long term (a number of years) positions that will allow us the ability to work on our own projects while still paying the rent/mortgage. In my mind, the best way to accomplish this is to find jobs outside of architecture, and for me that means looking to [...]

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A catch 22

Where have I been this past two months?

spencer — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 04:59:00 +0000

I just realized the other day that it has almost been 2 months since I last updated this blog. Who would have thought that I would be able to keep a normal writing schedule while I was working 50 hour weeks, but once I became unemployed I would struggle to write something ever few weeks, let alone months? So what have I been up to? Well, I have been writing an architecture criticism column for DC Metrocentric (check out the ArchiCritic category) and while at first it was every week that seemed to be nigh impossible to keep up. Now I have settled into a new post every other week, which is totally doable. I just wish that I didn’t wait until the last minute every time to write my article. The next big piece of news is that tomorrow is my last ARE exam, at least of this go-around. So far I have taken 6 exams and passed three. I am waiting on my scores for the rest. Tomorrow is Schematic Design. If the exam is anything like the practice problems I should be OK. Hopefully, with this one down, that means all I have to do is wait [...]

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Where have I been this past two months?

On the (internet) Radio, oh oh!

spencer — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:35:38 +0000

I have been twittering about my lay off experience and one of the people I’ve been talking to is Laura Conaway from the Planet Money Podcast by NPR. Today I had a phone interview with her and we discussed my situation. You can hear me at the end of today’s podcast (here is a link to their post about today’s show). I have a great deal of respect for this podcast. They are one of the few media outlets that is really helping to explain what is going on and make it a whole lot less frightening. Yes, it still sucks, but at least it doesn’t feel like a giant economic cataclysm without any meaning. Post from: selophane.blogOn the (internet) Radio, oh oh!

Post from: selophane.blog

On the (internet) Radio, oh oh!