Hello!
After a bit of agonizing, I spent a few happy hours in the community woodshop this afternoon. It was great to be back, and motivating—while machines can be loud and fast, they also make it easier to jump ahead in a project.
The agonizing came from my discomfort with, well, public discomfort. In woodworking, I feel very much still a beginner—learning and slowly thinking my way through each step before me. At home, on my own, this is rarely stressful; out and about, among others, this can unsettle me more than I’d like.
I feel I need to make good use of community shop time (since it takes time to get there and back, is often shared with a number of other people, and so on), so I try to be super planned and focused in advance, but that takes time, and, crucially, isn’t always realistic, since a project’s final design only reveals itself as you build it. Hence I’m trying to get out to the community shop more, to live through that discomfort and do the important growing that comes with—but that doesn’t make it any less tricky!
Winnie Lim, in describing exercise, offers some related observations: as we learn, we go through phases of great discomfort (often while the most change or learning is happening), coupled with more neutral ones, which can draw out and diminish our motivation. I think there’s a social discomfort to this, too—whether working out at a gym or woodworking at the community shop, we’re around others from whom we may perceive (real or not!) attention or skepticism or so on.
Anyhow—this is a reminder that pushing through that discomfort can yield great reward. I’m looking forward to heading back to the shop next week.
- Mandy Brown on how the risks of not changing from the status quo are just as real as those of any potential change. Plus some excellent Ursula Franklin discussion, for good measure. (h/t Sean!) Relatedly, I’ve previously pondered how a change in context demands re-evaluating the status quo, just as if it were an option for change.
- Two links from a journaling / diary-ing / reflecting theme (though what is writing but reflecting): Mita Williams on using a daily “Review Frame Exercise” from Lynda Barry; Rob Walker on using unintentional personal data archives to remember and reflect on the past.
- Scientists in New Brunswick (woo!) discovered a pre-dinosaur-ic tree fossil of an entirely unknown species. Ugh paywall (similar stories available from CBC, CNN, and NYTimes), but I think it's cool, as a more general point, that fossils aren't just about dinosaurs and such, they’re also plants and other fauna—and we're able, in some cases, to reconstruct whole trees, to see their structure and leaves. Amazing!
All the best for the week ahead!
Lucas