Independence
"If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability." ~ Henry Ford
I've been dwelling a lot lately on a couple of bigger projects, some things that I might not be able to pull off for a couple of years. Those projects include some things like teaching some smaller hand tool woodworking classes, beginning work on an a couple of articles I'd like to get published, at least one idea for a woodworking book, and beginning to plan and build pieces for a gallery show. As I think about these things, I tend to work them out in the written word, I cannot just keep an idea solely in my head, They start in my sketchbook and sometimes end up here on this blog, hopefully better formulated and thought out. I just have to see a thing to dive deeper into it, and the process of writing and seeing fills both my learning process of the spacial and the kinesthetic. This post is a part of that process too and some of you just looking to read about sawdust will have to bear with me as I work through my process. Other part of that will include asking questions of you guys who read the things I write. This may include some polls, and questions here and maybe a few other places I lurk.
Nothing is worth doing if it it not worth thinking about why you're doing it. Why does working with our hands hold such draw and appeal? What part of our psyche are we tapping into?
If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that I have started a daily Tweet between 3 and 4 in the afternoon that is basically a fill in the blank to this sentence, "To me woodworking is _________________" The Tweet includes an answer to the blank and a picture from the shop. I think there's 21 in total that I have done and when they finish their run on Twitter I will post them together here on the blog, but what is interesting to me is not entirely what I think of as filling in the blank but what you think should go in the blank. I sat down in an afternoon and wrote down 21 ideas that fit for me, and in the end as I sit back and look at my answers they all come back to one thing. The title of this post. Independence.
What's your answer?
Oldwolf
It really does fit in.
ReplyDeleteThe whole idea of making things in general is about independence. Part is making things the way *you* want them. Part is taking something with little to no value and making it valuable. Maybe monetary, maybe not. It might be elaborate, or raw utilitarian.
The Independence of it works on so many different levels for me.
ReplyDeleteOf course the grown up trick is realizing that you have to work and work hard for that independence. No one is going to hand anything to you.