Life of an Architect

08/29/2026

Years ago, my daughter told me she wanted to visit Norway and learn more about where our family came from, and I promised her that someday we would go together. We just returned from making good on that promise, but I always knew that Norway would only be part of what made this trip important to me. The real gift was getting uninterrupted time with my daughter at this particular point in her life. She is grown now, building a life that belongs entirely to her, and becoming someone I admire not simply because I am her father, but because of the person she has become. There is something incredibly special about watching your child grow into an adult and discovering that, while your role in their life changes, the relationship can become richer in ways you could not have understood when they were young.

Time together feels different now. Her life is increasingly filled with places she needs to be, things she wants to accomplish, and people who matter to her, which makes the fact that she still chooses to spend some of that time with me incredibly meaningful. I know there will be other trips and other experiences, and I certainly hope there are many of them, but I am also aware of how fortunate I am to have a daughter whose company I genuinely enjoy and who, for reasons I will try not to examine too closely, still seems to enjoy mine. Looking through these images, I see an incredible trip through Norway, but mostly I see time spent with someone who means more to me than I could ever adequately explain. I made my daughter a promise years ago that I would take her there, knowing even then that the destination would never matter as much to me as the person I would get to share it with.

08/28/2026

I have so many videos from this trip I should start my own OF site … OnlyFjords is what I’m thinking.

08/25/2026

Mostly Bergen - mostly too much fun.

08/22/2026

If I had to describe Norway so far, it would be a collection of every other countries greatest hits. Everywhere you turn is something beautiful and profound. Grateful that I am able to come here with my daughter (the church at the end was where my great grandfather is from - Isfjorden).

6 more days to go!

08/18/2026

Kate and I survived day one in Oslo - amazing weather! We took advantage of that by walking the entire waterfront and enjoyed the Oslo Opera House by Snøhetta (apologies to the two models out front in my picture who probably didn’t even realize I was there!)

Neither one of us has slept in about 30 hours so it’ll be a relatively quiet evening for us.

08/10/2026

Every decision eventually arrives at a point where more thinking stops helping and only starts postponing whatever is coming anyway. Nobody experiences that moment as procrastination while it is happening. It feels like diligence, like one more conversation or one more report will finally produce the certainty everyone is waiting on

Today, Andrew and I are talking about the process of thinking, committing, observing, and adapting - none of which are really about moving fast. It’s about refusing to let the search for certainty stand in for the work of actually deciding (which is harder than it sounds) because waiting rarely announces itself as waiting. Every real decision gets made on incomplete information, and no amount of extra thinking is ever going to change that, it was only ever going to change how long you waited before admitting it. The people who get good at this haven’t found a way around uncertainty; they’ve just stopped expecting it to go away, made the best call they could, and remained honest enough afterward to keep adjusting. That’s not a lesser standard than getting it right the first time. It’s the only one that was ever actually available to any of us.

Special thanks to episode sponsor Construction Specialties for their ongoing support.

Ep 207: Forward Beats Perfect - Careful thinking has a shelf life. This episode explores committing before you're ready, and why that's the better bet.

07/27/2026

In 3 weeks I am taking my daughter to Norway to bond and explore our heritage, and as part of my trip planning, I decided to draw our planned route. This map sketch - by far - has been the most challenging to date.

Recommendations based on your own Norwegian experiences are more than welcome. Don’t like the whale I drew? I suppose you can tell me that as well.

07/27/2026

What happens when you decide to post a sketch a day?

For the last month, I drew something every day and posted it online. The goal was not to produce thirty perfect drawings. I wanted sketching to feel normal again, rather than remaining something I regularly talked about doing. The drawing turned out to be the easy part. Posting the work introduced opinions, corrections, assumptions, and occasionally the comment that suggested that I should not be left unsupervised with a roll of trace paper. Some of the feedback was valuable, while some of it slowly began changing how I measured the exercise. The new Life of an Architect post and podcast is about recognizing when useful criticism becomes someone else rewriting the assignment.

Special thanks to episode sponsor Construction Specialties for their ongoing support of the Life of an Architect podcast.

Work To Your Own Standard explores how keeping a personal promise can matter more than meeting expectations others assign to your work.

07/25/2026

I had a brick fireplace that was painted white and you just couldn’t keep the soot/ash from discoloring brick in front of the fire. To solve this problem, I had a piece of steel bent to slid onto the frame of the fireplace, cover the hearth, and then it was folded down to complete the look.

It was awesome. Easy sketch that was 100% successful in communicating intent.