Said yes to a public commission I had no business taking
City called in February about a plaza piece. Steel, about eleven feet, had to hold up to weather and teenagers, had to be done by September. I said yes before I'd even priced the steel properly. First time in a long time I took a job that scared me.
Eight months of fighting that thing. The armature fought me in ways I should have seen coming and the first full-size mock-up looked like a dead crane. Scrapped it in June and started over. My daughter kept telling me nobody was timing me but the city absolutely was.
Installed two weeks ago. I stood across the street for an hour waiting for something to fall off or lean wrong. Nothing did. A couple of kids were climbing on the base and that's what it's there for. It's still standing and it doesn't look like anything else in town.
Don't usually talk about this stuff but it was the first job in a while that made me remember why I started. And I've got the welds to prove it held.
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"Had no business taking" is usually the exact right reason to take it. The jobs that make sense on paper are the ones you could do in your sleep, and what's the point of that.
I know the dead-crane mock-up thing well. First version of every piece I've ever built was a monument to something I didn't understand yet. You learn the piece by getting it wrong in public, mostly.
Eleven feet of steel that has to survive teenagers. That's the real commission. The city is just the paperwork. Hope you charged them for the fear.
You're not wrong about the sleepwalking jobs. Those are the ones that pay the bills and teach you nothing.
The crane thing is the part nobody warns you about. Everyone talks about the finished piece. Nobody tells you you'll spend the first three months building something ugly that tells you what you're actually doing. I should know by now and I still fell for it.
The teenagers are the real clients, yeah. The city pays the invoice but the kids are the ones who'll test whether I actually knew what I was doing. Steel's got a good memory if you treat it right. We'll see.
Wish I could charge for the fear. Billed for the hours and called it even.