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Martial arts and zen have effectively changed my life to a point where I can no longer work with computers anymore. They are too abstract for me. I want to work with my hands, see my creations. The following series is a journal in my beginnings in carpentry, and most importantly documenting my practice. A skill is only as good as it is consistently practiced.
After working with IT for almost 10 Years, I realized, I couldn’t stand it, I started trying to find tasks where I could feel accomplished again, something interesting, something lucrative and something tactile. Working in an office no longer is acceptable. I decided to work with wood, carpentry and general construction. Many factors, experiences and reflections went into this decision including:
1. I have never lived in one place for more than 3 years my whole life, since birth. At this moment, I am currently writing from a tiny fishing village in the North West of Peru. I have traveled quite a bit, never really calling one place my home. Home is a funny word and can conjure up all sorts of ideas. For me carpentry, framing to finish, is about learning one day to build my own house, from the ground up with my own two hands. It will take me many years of dedication, practice and some really good mistakes, but ultimately, this is one of the primary motivators to learning this ancient craft.
2. Carpentry and construction can be very lucrative depending on practiced skill, courage, business acumen, the ability to spot a good deal and of course, a ton of conviction transformed into conduct. From doing small side jobs and building a name for yourself, to finding fixer upper homes and flipping them, or perhaps finding comfort in a critical role in a union organization, I have no doubt, carpentry can be very lucrative.
3. Beside fiscal wealth, I feel carpentry and construction as whole can be spiritually uplifting applied appropriately. My first project with any kind was building a basic table. While a very simple project by some’s standards, I had made something from raw materials. Seeing my own creation, the usefulness that has come from it, and the table’s existence is a very uplifting thing. Now I want to learn how to make useful and artistic things.
4. Its not just about the work of carpentry, but the people. My father is a plumber, and no matter who he came across, no matter what they had, he never let someone go without heat during a brisk New York City winter. Whether he had to go to the worst neighborhoods and work for nothing, he has brought heat to the cold. Fixed holes in the floor and wall for single mom’s who couldn’t afford the work. That meant something to him and I little did I know as I watched this did he really teach me the meaning of gratitude.
5. Its fun. The tools, the arguments, the necessity of precision, the practical blend of utility and artistic expression. The fact that the skill has been around for thousands of years. The need for eye hand coordination.
As I practice each thing (very basic things at where I am at), I find the potential of contentment, something I never received working in an office. The practice of contentment is the ideal of the beginner’s mind. I attempt to hold a beginners mind. A beginner’s mind is to treat every experience as it as new. In martial arts, if you do a punch, after the thousandth punch, you should treat the one thousand and first punch with the focus and curiosity you had the first time you learned to do it.
This series will be reflections of my ignorance in carpentry, my ideals, my brutal realities as those ideals are met with experience.
Source: LumberJocks.com
- Carpentry Journal - A reflection of a new Kung-Fu #1: - A Beginner's mind -
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