Starting with a win

Long-winded openers | Into the fall schedule

Hello and welcome to the Hungry Woodworker, a humanistic exploration of woodworking, purpose, and trying to make a living from the skills of my two hands. I’m Taliesin and one thing I do when not working is write; some of those notes get edited into essays, which I share every other Thursday. Thank you for being here.

An update: I hope this finds you well!

I once read that such openers are a waste of time. Better to get right to the point in as few words as possible.

• Better yet, use bullet points!

• Optimize through minimizing

• (This bullet point serves no purpose other than to make this twosome a threesome because I read somewhere else that it’s poor form to have only two bullet points)

There is a lot of nonsense in the world telling us what hacks, tricks, shortcuts, pills we should be taking to be as productive, beautiful, worthwhile, indespensible as possible. Don’t you worry: this newsletter neither claims to offer nor contains any advice that will make you more productive, beautiful, worthwhile, or indespensible!

I’ve had a tough week, and there was absolutely no hack that would’ve made a difference. But it did get me thinking about how seductive it is to go for an easy fix when we’re in a hard situation. When you feel your back against a wall and your energy flagging, it feels nigh impossible to put in more hard effort. But I think that’s the time it matters most.

My essay is below. I hope you are finding strength even when you feel you have nothing left to give.

My son and I were in a musical this summer. At the end of it, I made some bookmarks for the cast out of Cherry scraps in my shop.

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Starting with a win

Summer is at an end in our household. (Not its heat-filled grip: we hit over 100° F here yesterday—this is the kind of weather that makes one’s heart appreciate a polar vortex.) On the most basic level, what the end of summer means for our family is the loss of unspooled days lacking a rigid schedule.

The kids start school this week, so our family must now attend to the calendar and all its dictates. Solid blocks of time each day assigned to work¹, learning, friends, and family (and for me, if I’m smart about it, whatever maintenance needed to keep from getting more injured or sick).

This means it’s time to get out of my head and into the practical, into the physical labor of trying to build some furniture.

This is a very good thing. Banging around inside the confines of my own thoughts is suffocating. But my solitary nature would have me think I’m breathing the most righteous oxygen.

This is the trap of the hermit. As I’ve written about, it’s entrancing to not be inconvenienced by, well, other people, outside opinions, obligations. To think that there is a possibility, just around the corner, of unfettered happiness, if only you could clear out all the obstacles. If only you could find a way to live pain free.

Life doesn’t give us that option. Ever. Any moment of joy will inevitably be chased away by some demon of stress, fear, or pain.

Last year, Brad Stulberg wrote: “Decades of modern science and millennia of ancient wisdom tell us that genuine happiness, peak experiences, and coveted flow states all emerge when we are in-sync with whatever it is we are doing. And being in-sync with whatever it is we are doing inherently means that we are not judging it.”

When I write, I’ve learned to quiet the judgements during the first draft. They aren’t allowed out until it’s time for revisions.

When I’m in the shop, this skill isn’t so strong. Partly it’s that I get distracted by stress or problems that mount faster and higher than I can surmount them. Partly it’s accepting my limitations as a learner when I’d prefer to have some mastery already.

Yesterday was my first day back in the shop with Dad since early July. My child’s teacher asked me if I could make some extensions for this secondhand table she’d purchased for her class. I have a list of other projects to work on, but I told Dad I wanted to do this one first. Because it is straightforward and I could see all the steps to completion.

I needed a day in which the path I was walking was cleared of brush, relatively flat, and through known territory.

In this way, woodworking (any kind of working with one’s hands?) can be healing.

We pulled out sturdy, heavy White Oak boards, 1 1/4” thick, thick enough to be planed to 1 1/8”, which is what the extensions needed to be.

We planed, straight edged, rip cut, and cross cut. We routed the bread board ends and broke the edges at the bottom of the aprons. We bored holes, glued and screwed the pieces together, put dowels in. I left the shop with the assembly completed. All that’s left is sanding the top, staining, and putting finish on.

The cat inspected my work. Unclear whether it passed muster or not.

Yesterday was a damn fine day. A day spent in the lumber solving easy problems. I don’t need every day to be the same, but days like that make the harder ones easier to bear. Days like that remind me I don’t need to be an expert or master woodworker to make something that makes someone else’s life a little better.

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A couple other essays

1. To be fair, I’m sure my partner Josiah would point out here that his workdays always revolve around a fixed schedule. But, to paraphrase my youngest child, I’m not talking about him, I’m talking about me. Okay, and the kids. We who don’t work in an office for an outside organization.