So, I know this is a common thing I been saying lately but getting laid off has made for some interesting times in my profession.  No new building happening, a horrible housing market, and no banks willing to lend basically let about +/- 50% of Denver, Coloradan’s architects and landscape architects know by getting the pink slip.  As I worked on my resumes shortly after that, I started to look around for social networking places.  You know, get my face out there and see who I can find.  I tried linkedin, facebook, and myspace, which I liked but I felt I needed to ‘specialize’ more within my profession.  I was googling late one night and found Land8Lounge.com.  I browsed around and started smiling.  This was exactly what I needed.  Not only can you find you’re your own “facebook’ type of home page, but blogs, forums, discussions all within the landscape architecture profession.  Check it out:

“Andrew Spiering and Kevin Gaughan created the site Land8Lounge as a means to provide an open forum for landscape architects to share their work and ideas. Spiering’s folio page includes a brief biography, a section on the various group he in which he is a member, his galleries and photo albums. All members’ pages have a similar layout and these pages include a roster of friends, similar to MySpace.”

There was a time there I was getting so frustrated and began to think I was going to have to find a new profession.  But I am not in the same boat.  Hundreds of my fellow LA’s are in the same situation and it was good reading up on the positive from them through articles and forums on that site, it got my creative juices flowing again.  It made me realize I played with legos and have been drawing since the age of 4; design is in my bones.  It made me realize that I got into LA not for the money, but for the passion.  Though I do like keeping a roof over my head.

So my advice to other unemployed/panning out part timers wanting full time out there is to hold on to the passions, ride out the recession as much as you can, keep your options open, and have a good attitude; bad attitudes are infectious.   I know that for fact.  So keep your head up and expect great things to happen…[via Land8Lounge]