How NOT to Save Money on a Project

also, how I almost killed my family

I have practiced interior design under my own moniker for fifteen years. I took the traditional route: a college degree followed by years of indentured servitude at a handful of architecture firms. Once I attempted to sleep off a debilitating migraine under an abandoned desk on an upper mezzanine; my boss yelled, “Where is Stephanie!? Stephanieeeee!?” A tear slipped from the corner of my eye. I silently begged anyone I told about my headache to please let him know I was not going home; I just needed a minute. Instead I yelled “I’m sorry! I’m here” My left eye completely void of function. I never reached upper management or senior-level designer positions at the firms where I spent my twenties. They taught me how to design, how to draw, how to work until my body might give out, then how to fill it with caffeine and keep working. Going to design school, then working for a large corporate architecture firm felt like striving for admittance into a secret society. Often asking my peers, “Why are we doing this again!?” The experience felt equal parts thrilling and degrading and at the end I resembled a dog who lived in the shelter for just a bit too long. I needed a sign to say I might bite. I encountered a young, beautiful woman at a dinner party who shared that she was also an interior designer. “Self-taught,” she said. Amazing, I thought. Look how beautiful you are. I imagine she spent her twenties sleeping in a bed.