I really like the opening metaphor you use, Joan: planning life as if we were editing a movie trailer. A sequence of intense scenes, chosen to condense meaning and prove that something “mattered.”
At first, that image made me think about how we edit life outwardly. How—partly pushed by social media—we end up selecting certain peaks, photographing them, assembling that trailer almost in real time. Sometimes it feels like we’re paying more attention to how it will look than to how it’s actually lived.
Although I’ve never really identified with showing my life—maybe because I grew up with a fairly austere one: a soccer ball, two brothers, and a backyard—I especially liked how the idea shifts toward Monday. Toward the ordinary, as the place where, in reality, almost everything happens.
Since I was able to have my small architecture studio, Mondays started to feel different. Not necessarily lighter, but more balanced, more varied. And not because of big events, but because of very simple things.
Reading for a while. Making coffee without rush, not to wake myself up, but simply because I enjoy it. Sitting down to talk as the day begins. I gradually organized my life around that kind of Monday. So much so that holidays sometimes throw me off. We’re already well into February and I still haven’t fully returned to my routine—and I miss it.
Reading you now, it feels like it wasn’t forced or a conscious sacrifice. It just happened. As if, intuitively, I had been designing a life I don’t need to escape from on an ordinary day.
By the way, the part about environment and architecture helped me organize ideas that had been circling in my mind for quite some time.
