I’m so glad
you stopped by to read a few of my words. You may be puzzled to see a welcome
message as the fourth entry posted on a blog, but I wanted to get a few entries
in before I started inviting people to visit and read.
Why?
In college, I
had six different majors, and I spent 16 years obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree.
My friends can assert that I have a history of starting schools, jobs,
projects, and hobbies that I later abandon due to lack of interest.
But two
activities keep coming back to me: carpentry and writing. I can remember when I
was a kid I the early 80’s, sitting in the living room on weekends when my dad
was watching “This Old House”, “New Yankee Workshop”, and “The Woodwright’s
Shop”. These guys had power tools, and that was pretty awesome (Well, the first
two did. The guy on the third show works entirely without power tools, which is
its own kind of completely freakin’ awesome), but even more awesome, they built
stuff!
Norm Abram is
the host of “New Yankee Workshop” and a bit of a personal hero. He’s a solid
carpenter, aided, I’m sure, by the magic of television to allow him to fix
mistakes and cover imperfections without the audience ever having to know about
them. He loves going into antique stores, finding great old pieces of
furniture, and showing his audience how to adapt those old pieces to modern
tools, modern materials, and modern techniques. The most respected and
expensive carpenters would replicate materials and techniques, but Norm isn’t
trying to preserve old techniques as much as he’s trying to teach the joy of
creating something for yourself. He’s a great teacher, and he calls drawers
“drawhs”, and I gained an early fascination with carpentry from him. I always
suspected that if I got a chance, I would love and have a talent for
woodworking.
I got my
chance during 2007 and 2008 to test out my suspicions when I left retail and
started working as an apprentice carpenter. Although the company closed in
2008, and I went back to retail, I’ve never abandoned carpentry. I don’t get to
do it much, because tools and space are either expensive or at other peoples’
houses, but the work I do is satisfying.
I’ve also had
a fascination with writing down words for other people to read. I remember
Christmas in third grade, to this day still my favorite Christmas, when I
opened my presents to find a boxed set of The
Lord of the Rings. Tolkien hooked me on the idea of world-building. I
started trying to write sequels to his works, and nothing thrilled me more than
seeing Middle-Earth realized on film. I was, and still am, less concerned with
Peter Jackson faithfulness to Tolkien’s story than with his faithfulness to the
vision and world of Middle-Earth. My desire to write and to share grew out of
my fascination with world-building.
I would never
have imagined it, but I fear that I have become “that guy” among my group of
family and friends who flits from master plan to master plan, unfortunately
doing more planning than mastering. I play golf with around a 40 handicap, know
about two or three guitar chords, and I have a nice 3.5” Newtonian reflector
telescope languishing in my closet. My hard drive is littered with the remnants
of computer programming projects that never resulted in any practical
programming knowledge. I even know 10 or 12 words in Japanese.
As I begin a
new project, fully realizing that the weight of my own history argues strongly
for failure, I simply haven’t yet had the nerve to announce a blog that I would
update once and then forget. This concept, this project of writing is too
important to me to allow it to become another abandoned pursuit.
So I’ve
waited, and I have a plan and a vision.
Here’s the
plan:
Write something every single day. Most days I
expect that I’ll work on this blog. I plan to write many more entries than I
actually publish, because not every entry will be a good one. If one out of
three is actually any good, then I still get a couple of posts per week, at
that rate. My plan will actually require a great deal more time management than
you may think. I have a job, a wife, two kids, and an addiction to wasting
time. I can spend an hour and a half looking at stupid pictures and gifs on
reddit, and, like many of my generation, video games are a tempting
distraction. There’s nothing wrong with entertainment, but I won’t neglect my
commitments to my family, my fitness, or my job, so I need to reduce my
entertainment commitment if I’m going to find time to write.
And here’s
the vision:
This blog
should be a vehicle for people who already know me to get to know me better and
a place where people who don’t know me can meet me. Sometimes that will mean
confessional posts, and sometimes I might just rant about something that I just
can’t ignore.
This blog
will be honest.
Finally, this
blog will a mental workout for me. If you’ve ready my earlier posts, you know
that I’m physically out of shape and trying to get back on track. Ditto on the
brain. If I’m going to make a go at a childhood dream, I need to get my brain
and my fingers going again.
Welcome and
thanks for starting this journey with me.
