It's too late...

A lie we tell ourselves that keeps us trapped.  It's too late to change course.  It's too late to do anything different.

I once heard somebody say, "You can be anything you want in seven years."  Yes, there are exceptions - no matter how much I could possibly want it, I could never be on an NFL roster.  But the point is, that if I wanted to be a chiropractor or a psychologist, I could do that, assuming I am willing to put in the time and the work.  It doesn't matter that I'm 33 years old.

Paul Newman didn't begin his auto racing career until the age where most drivers are considering retirement, if they haven't retired already.  He was 47.

He went on to win 4 national championships.

Stephen Pressfield wrote in The War of Art:

Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives.  There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny...This second, we can sit down and do our work

It won't necessarily be easy.  It won't necessarily be instantaneous.  But, right now, you can change your course.  Right now, you can choose to do the work to change your life.  It is never too late.

If you want it...

All that matters

Along with my apparent obsession with Meditations, I am also very caught up in the works of Stephen Pressfield.  In The War of Art, he wrote:

How many pages have I produced?  I don't care.  Are they any good?  I don't even think about it.  All that matters is I've put in my time and hit it with all I've got

A recurring theme I have been hearing is essentially, "Just do the work."  Brian Koppelman talks a lot about his morning pages.  In his interview with Ed Burns, Burns talked about how he sits down at his computer and writes.  He writes for three, four hours, until he's done writing for the day.  He knows that the writing may not be good initially, but maybe something will come from it later - some piece of dialogue, some scene description.

The important part is putting in the work.

I don't recall the specific podcast or article, and honestly, it has probably come up a number of times, as it feels like a recurring theme.  If I sit down at the piano, I would not be expected to turn out something great.  I won't even be expected to turn out something mediocre.  Why?  Because I have not put in the time and work to develop those skills.

But with writing, there is a different expectation.  Maybe it is that writing, at its base, is just another form of communication, and we all communicate, right?  I write text messages and emails all day, and well, I've been talking for nearly my entire life, so I should be able to communicate a message well, right?

But learning any skill, writing included - communication included - takes time and effort.

But, it's not just about the time put in.  It needs to be worthwhile time.  Like Pressfield says, "All that matters is I've put in my time and hit it with all I've got."  It's not just time.  It's also the quality of the effort you bring.  I remember a professor in college saying that, "It isn't that practice makes perfect; perfect practice makes perfect."  Time alone isn't enough.

It makes me think back to all of the time I spent studying poker years ago.  In any given session, it is not about whether you win or lose.  It's about whether or not you made the right decisions that give you positive expectation long-term. 

Like poker, with writing (or any creative endeavor for that matter), the result of any given day is irrelevant, as long as you are doing the right things and putting in the necessary time and effort.

When you lack discipline

How often do you set your alarm with every intention of getting up and getting an early start on your day, only to reset it, or hit the snooze?  I mean, you have a perfectly rational reason to do so - the baby woke up from 1:00-1:45a, and again at 3:00a.  The cat was making a bunch of noise because we weren't giving him any attention.

I think it happened for me every single day this week.  And every time I was changing the alarm from 5:15 to 5:30a, I heard the voice of Jocko Willink in my mind:

That pillow is suffocating your dreams...

Now, what he is getting at is that my desire for comfort is getting in the way of practicing discipline, and his whole mantra is that discipline equals freedom.

Needless to say, every day this week, my morning routine was thrown off by just a little bit.  It was a little bit more chaotic, and I struggled to get out the door at my intended time.  All because I lacked the discipline to get up, seeking an additional 15 minutes in bed, which were not even that restful, since I knew the next alarm was imminent.

Beginning your day with the thought of, "I failed at task #1 today.  Great start!" is...well...not a great start.

At the start of book 5 of his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius makes a pretty strong statement to essentially "get your ass out of bed in the morning!"  But, I'm not going to focus on that one today.

Instead, I'm going to focus on a point he makes a little bit later in book 5 about when we fall short:

Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions.  But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human - however imperfectly - and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on
Meditations 5.9

The worst thing I could do is say, "Wow, I started by failing with the first thing I wanted to do today," and then let that set the stage for my entire day.  "Get back up when you fail."  That's it, right there.  Just get back up - "and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on."

Don't be exasperated or defeated when you fail.  Get back up and continue on the journey to a good life.

Make note of the little things in life

I mean literally - when there is something in life that puts a smile on your face or brings you a little bit of joy, make note of it somewhere.

Like this morning.

Every morning, I go let the dog out of Devin's room to feed her and let her out before I go to work.  Some mornings, Devin stays asleep. 

This morning, she sat straight up with a huge smile and said, "I had the best dream in the world!"

 "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah!  I saw a...rainbow...BUTTERFLY!!!"

Literally, write stuff like this down.  Life is full of little moments like this.  Make note of the good ones

One trait I hope to instill in my children

Curiosity.

A desire to always learn more, to investigate further.  An understanding that no matter what they already know, there is always something more.  More detail.  More nuance.  Entirely new subjects.  There is always something more to learn.

And that is an amazing thing!

I often find myself wondering things about the world, or how people tick, and then I receive a look of, "Why would you ever wonder that?"  I don't have an explanation.  I just do.

Brian Grazer wrote a great book about the journey that curiosity has taken him on throughout his career as a film producer.  He reminds us that

Life isn't about finding the answers, it's about asking the questions

With all of the resources available to us at the click of a button, we can learn virtually anything.  I could find an answer to almost any question with a quick Google search.  But what if I never ask the questions?

So, at this exact moment, if there was one trait that I could instill in my children it would be curiosity - not the incessant "Why" of a 4-year-old when you tell her to brush her teeth - but a genuine curiosity about the world and people.

Mere curiosity, and the willingness to go down the rabbit hole, can expose you to so many people, places, ideas that you might have never found otherwise.

I heard somebody once described as having "a profound lack of curiosity."  This person portrayed themselves as somebody who knew just about everything.  I hope that is never an applicable description of me.  A profound lack of curiosity means that there is nothing else worthwhile to learn.

And what kind of world is that to live in?

Where the idea becomes real

The grip is man’s connection to the world outside himself. The hands are where the subjective meets the objective.  True intelligence does not reside in the brain, but in the hands

Sure, The Legend of Bagger Vance is about the game of golf, but I just loved this visual, and see it applying to things beyond golf.

It is in how the woodworker holds the chisel.  How the painter holds the brush.  The potter the clay.  The writer the pen and the page (or keyboard).

The examples could go on and on.

The "grip" is where all of the work, discipline, curiosity, practice - it is where all of those come into reality.  It is not the thought of a table that brings the table into existence, but the execution through the hands.

There is just something about working with your hands that satisfies in a very real way; in a way that mental exercises will never be able to compare.

Fighting back against analysis paralysis

I've now re-written this opening line for a 3rd time.

Not creating is much easier than creating.  Well, being in the "planning phase" is much easier than actually creating something.  In the planning phase, there are no expectations, and as Dr. John Becker in the old CBS sitcom Becker said:

No expectations, no letdowns

If there are no expectations, you can't be let down.  If there are no expectations of you, you can't let somebody else down.  There is no danger in saying, "Yeah, I'm still working on that - brainstorming..."  It's safe.

I know that I suffer from analysis paralysis.  I have a very hard time pressing "SAVE & PUBLISH" on something (like this post) that I know could be better later.

But that's the irony.

If I always put off pushing the button, I will NEVER get better.  If I never put my work out in the world, I will never improve.  Improvement will come with practice, not merely thinking.

So, I am fighting against the urge to hold off.  I know that this post - and everything I will ever write - is not going to be perfect.  I could always take a little more time to tweak it.  Fix this or that - but if I take that approach, nothing will ever get done, and I will never improve.

And that's what life is about, right?  Improving.

And of course, a note from Marcus Aurelius:

Practice even what seems impossible.
The left hand is useless at almost everything, for lack of practice.  But it guides the reins better than the right.  From practice
Meditations 12.6

This is practice.

Self-Reflection

I'm sure you'll start to notice a trend...

Marcus Aurelius reminds us:

Learn to ask of all actions, "Why are they doing that?"
Starting with your own
Meditations 10.37

There are many recurrent themes throughout the book, and a major one is self-reflection and responsibility.

I should question why others do what they do.  Not in exasperation, but truly trying to understand.  That kind of understanding could potentially bring some insight.

However, I should question why I do what I do first, and foremost.  I need to be deliberate in my actions.  I need to know why I do the things that I do.

A good basis for any actions should fit Jordan Peterson's fourth rule from 12 Rules for Life:

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who somebody else is today

I have been thinking recently about my old friend Steve Rose, and something he wrote which was included in the program at his funeral.  I don't have the exact words in front of me, but he wrote something to the effect that his hope was to be a better husband to his wife and father to his children each day than he was the day before.

It's not about what anybody else is doing, though I can learn from those things.  It's about what I am doing today to be a better husband, father, and man than I was yesterday.

Thoughts from a run

One foot in front of the other.  Don't look back.

Change direction, change speed, just don't stop moving. 

A California Mudslide and a Diet Coke [FOMO and Media Consumption]

A little over a year ago, I worked on a bit of an experiment relating to the news media.  The experiement was this:

1. Every day, jot down links and headlines from major news stories of the day
2. 4 weeks later, post those links and headlines on Twitter with #MonthOldNews

After a month of collecting links and headlines, and then a couple of weeks posting them, it didn't really take off and I let the experiment go.  It did, however, largely confirm my hypothesis:

What we think is so important in the news today will not even matter in a month

In that month, there were "major" developments in the Trump/Russia investigation (May 2017), and the Manchester bombing at the Ariana Grande concert.  The details regarding the Trump/Russia investigation had largely changed focus, and the imminently important info from the beginning of the month was nowhere to be found at the end of the month.  And the bombing which was all over the news when it first happened, was nothing more than a distant memory just a few weeks later.

I used to obsessively check news sites all day long.  I'd cycle through a bunch of them, at least a few times an hour.  I always wanted to know what was going on throughout the world and I wanted to know now.  I had some serious FOMO - that somebody might say, "Did you hear about..." and that I wouldn't already know everything there is to know about that situation.

So much of the news is just so depressing.  And I was consuming so much of it that I know it was affecting me negatively.

I do not remember the specific date and time, but I do remember the moment where I finally swore off obsessively checking the news.

I was sending a fax at work (yes, I know it is 2018 and I still send faxes - a lot of faxes), and saw breaking news on CNBC.  Something like 17 people had been killed in mudslides in California.  As I mentioned before - depressing.  But that's not what did it.  That's not what pushed me over the edge.

I looked away for a moment and when I looked back, the next piece of breaking news - less than 30 seconds later - "Diet Coke is revealing new can designs and four new flavors!"

California Mudslide and a Diet Coke...It sounds like something you might order at the bar.

But this was breaking news, separated by less than 30 seconds.  California Mudslide, and a Diet Coke.

I'm out!  This is what I was obsessively checking all day every day?  This is why I am afraid of missing out?

It took awhile to break the muscle memory of visiting certain websites.  Pop open my internet browser, start typing so it will auto-fill, hit enter, consume.  It is so easy.  Giving it up was actually quite difficult for those first few days and weeks.

But giving up the obsessive checking of the news media is one of the best decisions I've made.  Simply put, I am happier.  I am far from ignorant of what is going on in the world.  I still selectively seek out certain news stories to learn more.  It is not a full media blackout.  But now, when I am seeking out the news, I am seeking specific information, not trying to absorb everything that is out there.

This is just an example of reducing proverbial noise in my life, an idea that I am sure I will revisit.

I have expanded this to other things on the internet as well.  There is another website, which I will not name, that I used to visit frequently - 5-10 times a day or more.  As time has gone on, the website has decided to focus on things that I simply found irritating.  I would read an article, and be frustrated.

Why would I do that?  What good does it do me?

Again, it was hard to give up, but I truly feel better for it.

For me, it worked to give up checking the news sites dozens of times a day, and giving up websites that were intentionally provocative - all you have to do is read the comments on any article to understand that is what they are doing, and they are wildly successful at it.  The specifics may differ for you.

What it boils down to is being deliberate in media consumption, whether through the news, articles, videos, podcasts, books, blogs, whatever.  Deliberate consumption versus general consumption.

A challenge for you - If you find yourself reading or watching something, wondering "Why am I doing this?" Give that thing up for a week or two.  My guess is that you won't even miss it.

For the first day or two, there were a lot of thoughts of, "Well, what should I do for these few minutes now?"  Again, it is all about deliberate consumption.  Find a blog (maybe this one).  Start keeping a journal or have a notebook to just jot down your thoughts.  The options are limitless.

But, whatever you do, be deliberate, do it with purpose, and you will be better for it.

A satisfying and reverent life

Marcus Aurelius wrote:

Concentrate every minute...on doing what is in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice.  And on freeing yourself from all other distractions.  Yes you can - if you do everything as if it was the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.  You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?

 Meditations 2.5

After reading Meditations , this particular one seems to sum up so much of the book.  Life is not permanent, so act accordingly.  And you have control over how you act and react.  These ideas cover almost everything.

Of course mermaids are real [the lies we tell our kids]

"You've seen mermaids before, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, I did!!!" she exclaimed.

"Well, there ya go."

She's 4 years old and was having a little bit of an existential crisis.  She doesn't need to be as jaded as I am about so many things in the world.  That will come in due time.

The conversation we had was about the "mermaids" that we saw at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival last year - an exhibit that had Devin in complete awe.  The mermaids were sitting on some rocks, partially out of the water, splashing, cooing, trilling, waving.  Devin even got some pictures with some of them, and got a special little toy at the end.  She loved it.

Evidently yesterday at daycare some of the other kids were talking and saying that mermaids weren't real, and Devin was asking about it.

To a 4-year-old, a world with mermaids - especially ones that she met - is a happier place than a world without.  I'm sure that fantasy world will be destroyed soon enough, so why expedite it?

This post will probably suck

I should probably wait until later.

I mean, Seth Godin says that if I write every day, I'll almost certainly suck day 1, and if I write every day, well, I will still probably suck at day 31, but maybe a little less.  And I will almost certainly be better on day 100 than on day 1.

So I'll wait...Why write something today when I know for sure that it will suck?  Why not wait until 3 months from now when I'll probably be a marginally better writer?  Except that this would likely result in 3 months of no writing.

I heard Allen Gannett on the Jordan Harbinger Show (7/12/2018), and he talked about how the greatest creators are great consumers of content, and that consumption is the fuel for creativity.

At one point he said, "If you want to connect the dots, you have to have a lot of dots to connect."

I have recently begun reading actively - underlining, making notes, following Ryan Holiday's posts about his notecard system and marginalia.

But I've only read a couple of books using that system, so I don't have many dots to connect.  More reason to wait.

And then months go by and I've done nothing.  Sure, I've written down some thoughts in a journal.  I've read more in the past few months than I have in recent memory, being very deliberate in my reading.  But there is this nagging feeling that I haven't done enough, haven't found enough dots to connect, haven't developed enough ideas, to warrant writing about them on the blog - sharing with others the things that I have learned.

Then it hit me.  As I've discussed previously, this seems to be a manifestation of Stephen Pressfield's Resistance.  But, why would I write about some profound life lesson I learned reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, when I know full-well that my writing is going to suck?  Doesn't this message deserve better than I currently have to offer?  I have convinced myself, rather I have allowed resistance to convince me, that I am not qualified to share a given message.  But why am I not qualified?  Simply because I have not yet put in the work.

The realization I had in the past day or so is that some of these lessons I've learned, particularly from Meditations, are timeless lessons.  Why do I treat an idea as though it is something that could be addressed just one time?  Instead, I could do my best now, and come back to these thoughts as I get better.  I could come back once I have more dots to connect, as I learn more, as I am an improved writer.

So, I will pass on this lesson I took from Meditations 2.7:

Make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile.  Stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions...People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time - even when hard at work

Like Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote over 1800 years ago - make the time to learn something worthwhile and give yourself purpose.  And like Seth Godin would tell us today - take that something and go do the work.

Our Beautiful Daughters

As an early anniversary/birthday/fathers' day gift, Abbie bought me the Sigma 85mm 1.4 ART lens.  Definitely a big step up from our old Nikkor 50mm 1.8, though there is nothing wrong with that lens.

So, what better way to start my birthday/fathers' day than by taking some pictures of our beautiful daughters.

Special shout out to Abbie for designing and making Danica's dress. 

My Favorite Photos 001

So far, I have posted about a poker table, lights, closet door knobs, becoming complacent, and the irony of then going a month without posting anything - all on my photography website.

So, I figured it was about time to make a photography post.

As time goes on, I want to share some of my favorite photos, and hopefully improve along the way, so why not start with one of my favorites?

I absolutely love this picture, not because of any technical aspects, but because of the memory of the day this picture was taken.

I took this picture back before I had even a rudimentary understanding of photography.  I didn't even know what RAW was.  This was taken on our old waterproof, point-and-shoot Nikon, which has sadly since stopped working.

Anyway, I look at it now and see that the trees are overexposed on the left and underexposed on the right.  I can tell that the colors were adjusted in Lightroom on a monitor which was not properly calibrated.

I like the composition, the way the river and trees come together, yet seem to go on forever.  I like the stillness of the water, reflecting the clouds and the sky.  Really, though, I think I love the memory of that day.

This was taken in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.  We were staying with some friends at their cabin near Lake Vermillion, and decided to take a day trip into the Boundary Waters.  I had never been there before.

We paddled up the Little Indian Sioux River, through Upper and Lower Pauness Lakes, and had lunch at Devil's Cascade, before paddling back to the entry point and driving back to the cabin.  This picture was taken at one of the portage points.

It was a perfect day for a day trip in, and the BWCA is the most beautiful place I have ever been, though Zion National Park is right up there.

It was an exhausting day, though.  I think it was about 12 miles round trip, paddling, and all four of us were in one canoe.  But it was a great day, in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, spending the day with some of our best friends.

This isn't a great photograph, and I know that.  Still, it is one of my favorite pictures because of the memory of that day and the beauty of the BWCA, which I hope was at least somewhat present in the picture.

----- 

One last thought: 

As I am writing this, I find that I cannot quite call this a photograph.  I have been following Brooks Jensen from Lens Work Publishing, and on his podcast, he often talks about "making" a photograph, like making a piece of art.  I have taken that to show a distinction between "making" a photograph, and "taking" a picture.  I wish that I had made this photograph, but deep down I know that I just took a picture and got lucky that I find it visually appealing.

I guess I'll just have to go back and make a proper photograph, rather than just taking a nice picture...

Irony

The irony is not lost on me that I wrote a blog post titled “Complacency,” and have not posted since.  It has been a month.

Where did that time go?

How is it already February 2018?

I have had every intention to write.  I have thought an awful lot about writing.  But I haven't.

Have I yet again become complacent?

I found an old book I downloaded on the Kindle and while I remember having read it, I did not remember many of the details.  It was, The War of Art, by Stephen Pressfield.  It is a short book.  I have been reading it again, a few pages each day.  In it, he writes about The Resistance, and its many forms which prevent us from producing or creating - or more importantly, living the lives that we want.

He would say that Resistance is what convinced me to not post for the past month.  Resistance is what has left a post about complacency and doing small things to make my life better as the last thing I have shared.

But where has the time gone?

I have a full-time job and a family with two daughters under four.  Perhaps thinking that I will somehow, magically find the time to write is a form of Resistance.

Sure, I work full-time and want to be able to spend time with the family, but I take the bus to work and have this fancy new device called a smartphone.  While I definitely prefer typing on a keyboard rather than a phone, I cannot find the time to write on my laptop at home, so I guess I need to make the time.

It is easy to sit on the bus and pull something up on Netflix or YouTube and completely waste the 25 minutes I have, uninterrupted by work or kids.  Why not write?  It ironically feels less convenient since I would prefer to write on my laptop, but I have the ability to open a document on my phone and write as much or as little as I please.  It doesn't get more convenient than that.

Even now, I can feel Resistance telling me, “It's ok.  You don't have to watch Netflix, but why not just press play on your podcast?  You can write after the kids go to bed tonight.”

In addition to everything, I am also studying for CFA Level 2 in June.  This is another situation where I will not find the time, I need to make it.  I have become very efficient at my job.  Rather than skimming the news during my moments of downtime, I can take that time to do some practice problems, or write.

It is easy to tell myself that I can find the time to work on my writing later in the day.  It is amazing to me how easy it is to rationalize NOT doing the things that I know I want to do.  I want to write.  How have I convinced myself that I can just do it later, especially when I have this free time during my commute?

The battle will continue, I know, but just for today, as the bus is pulling into Downtown Minneapolis, I can't help but feel that Resistance lost this morning.

Complacency

It can sneak up on us without even realizing it.  The troubling thing is that it is so easy to rationalize.

When we bought the house, it needed a lot of work.  I mean, A LOT!  We closed the day before Thanksgiving 2011, but our first night in the house was between Christmas and New Year’s.  We knew it was going to be a lot of work, but as with any 30+ year-old house, there are bound to be problems that creep up that you did not plan for.

For example, the previous owners had pets in the house, and did not always do such a great job of taking the pets OUT of the house.  42 sheets of OSB later, nearly killing the truck on the drive back from Home Depot, and we had replaced nearly all of the subfloor on the upstairs.  We had to paint.  We had to clean up outside.  The house was a disaster.

At the time, I was working for an insulation company, getting into work about 5:45a every day.  Once work was done, I would drive down to the house to work for anywhere from 4-8 more hours, go home to sleep for a little bit, then get up and do it all over again.  Abbie was doing the same.  On weekends we would often put in 20+ hours.

Needless to say, we got burned out.  We moved in without trim installed.  A ton of the house was far from completed.  But we were so burned out that before we knew it, a year had passed and we hadn’t done anything else on the house.  Maybe we had put up curtains, which were a nice addition, but still not much.

I had become complacent.  I won’t say that Abbie did, because she is always ready to do more, but I know I had.  Over time, we finally completed some of the trim upstairs, though as I look around, complacency rears its ugly head again and again, as I see trim boards that I know were cut, but were never nailed up.  90% of the way done, and yet unfinished.  Complacency.

There are so many little things that are so easy to do, which can greatly improve our living experience in this house.  I am going to be much more proactive in getting those little things done which do not take much time, they just take getting off the couch.

For example, the knobs on closet doors.  It’s been six years, and we’ve been resigned to opening our closet doors by sliding a toe underneath and pulling them open.  This is pure complacency.  Again, 90% of the way done, yet unfinished.

8 minutes.

That’s about how long it took to install the knobs on the closet doors, including setup.  Another 4 minutes finished the knobs in another room (ironically the first room that we “finished” for Devin when she was born).  Drill, tape measure, laser level, knobs.  Complacency kept that unfinished for six years.

It’s time to start knocking out those little things – nail up that trim, put up coat hooks in the entryway, fix the drawer in the kitchen.

What have you become complacent about?  What simple things could you do to make improvements in your life?

So, what am I doing?

So, what am I doing here?

On a photography website, I have two blog posts unrelated to photography, other than that I added some pictures taken with my phone.

In part, I want to document the things I am working on, whether those are renovation projects around the house, photo projects, things I am building, or anything else I happen to be thinking about.  I also want to get back into the habit of writing.

Abbie and I bought our house a little over six years ago, and I know I have “before” pictures from the day of closing somewhere, but I am not sure where exactly.  When we bought the house, it was in pretty rough shape.  I look around today, and even though there are still so many things that need to be done, it is amazing to see how far it has come.  I wish I had a better record of the improvements we have made on the house.  Going back even further, I wish I had a record of the basement remodel we did at Abbie’s grandma’s house.

I also enjoy doing photography, and while I have created some images that I like, I am aware of how limited my knowledge and skills are.  I want to document my journey learning to take and edit better photos.

And then there is woodworking and building.  I can look around my house and garage and see probably a dozen different things that I’ve made over the past few years, ranging from a workbench and shelves in the garage, to cold air return covers, to a bookcase/entertainment center, and a gate for the top of the stairs on my deck.  My aim is to develop my skills in woodworking and building techniques and design, and document that development as well.

I guess what it boils down to is that I want to write about my journey in creating and fixing things.  I want to dedicate myself to bringing something meaningful to the table (ideally a table which I will build), and hopefully inspire others to do the same.

Peter Korn said it better than I could in his book, Why We Make Things and Why it Matters: The Education of a Craftsman: “[M]y experience has been that the effort to bring something meaningful into the world – whether in the arts, the kitchen, or the marketplace – is exactly what generates the sense of meaning for which so many of us yearn so deeply…My intuition from the day I first picked up a hammer was that making things with a commitment to quality would lead to a good life.”

Today is the last day of my paternity leave from the birth of our second daughter.  Tomorrow morning, I will leave the house around 6:20a to go work for somebody else.  This blog, these projects – these are for me.  This is my commitment to putting in the effort to bring something meaningful into the world, committing to quality, in the hopes that I can show my daughters how to live the good life.

Seeking Validation

I'll start with a little bit about myself.  I'm 32 years old, married my high school sweetheart almost 11 years ago, and we have 2 daughters, 3 and a half, and 8 weeks.

One thing that my 3-year-old has taught me is to not expect validation from her.  Just when I think I have nailed it with something for her, she'll respond with, "Ok, can I go watch Barbie?"

Doesn't she know that I spent hours, days, or weeks working on it???

One of the best examples of this was when we found out that our youngest was going to be a baby sister.  For weeks, our oldest (Devin) was adamant that she wanted a baby sister.  I have told my wife (Abbie) for years that I am going to end up in a house full of girls, but we still had to set the expectation that she might end up with a baby brother.  On the day we found out she was in fact a girl, I pulled out my phone to record Devin's reaction when we told her she was going to have a baby sister.  When I asked, "Devin, do you want a baby sister or baby brother?"

"Ummmm...brother."

That's what I get for expecting a particular reaction from a 3-year old.

 But then sometimes she gives the reaction that we hope for.

In the 8 weeks that we've been home with our youngest (Danica), and a little while before, we've been preparing an extra bedroom in the house for Devin to be her own, brand-new "big girl room."

We scraped the popcorn off of the ceiling and finished it smooth.  Side note here - if you have previously covered ceiling popcorn with something like Kilz primer, it becomes immensely more difficult to remove.  It was still worth it, but far more work than I had initially expected.

We replaced the cheap "boob light" we had installed when we bought the house with a flush-mount light with some dangling crystals.  We painted the walls pink and purple, and put up base trim and crown moulding.

It wasn't a complete surprise, as she had snuck into the room previously and already knew about the light, but needless to say, she loved it.  I know this because she started running circles around the room shouting, "I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!!!!"

In addition to all of the work we did on the actual room itself, I am also in the process of building her a farmhouse-style bed, a chest for blankets, and a bookcase (perhaps more to come on those projects in the future).  I also made a stuffed-animal zoo, which I think contributed to the "I LOVE IT" reaction.

So, generally speaking, seeking the validation of a 3-year-old will often leave you disappointed; but, those times that they truly appreciate something you've done are hard to beat.

I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!!!

Seemingly countless days/hours fixing the ceiling and installing crown moulding...couldn't care less

I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!!!

I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!!!