Reply To: Are you working or not ?

This is a great discussion, I look forward to hearing the conclusions of all your responders. I didn’t reply originally because my answer is both Yes and No.

I was laid off from my old firm in Oct 2008, my husband shortly thereafter. We’d talked about starting up our own firm and decided this was the perfect time to do it. So a year ago, we started our own LEED consulting firm. But because there is so much competition now, we have been struggling to land clients. Luckily, we’re both on unemployment still and it’s helping us get by. Long story short, 2009 was a very rough year but we are optimistic. We know too many people (mostly architects) out of work that were laid off even more than once in the past year or so.

The decision to start a firm that utilized our combined skills just made sense. I may not be designing anymore but I’ve never wanted to only design; my interests are more in educating and advocating for green design. This recession has really helped me to evolve my career into something I’m really passionate about, so I would advise others to try looking at it that way instead of my original attitude of ‘man, this sucks’.