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Hobbies for life?

As a home-owner, there is always another thing to improve or fix. The next project I always looming. YouTube is full with videos to teach me yet another new skill. And although most of the things I learn will stay with me for the rest of my life anyway, woodworking in particular feels like something a little more special – like a new hobby.

Japanese hand plane and it’s first proper shavings

On the one hand have I gotten quite interested and invested into Japanese woodworking tools and learning to use them. On the other hand do I question my investment in this new hobby, particularly when it comes to the Japanese hand plane that I bought.

Setting up the hand plane was a laborious task – which in all fairness I had been warned for – that has thought me a useful new skills (sharpening) but has also cost me quite a bit of time; time spend preparing a tool to perform a certain task in our endeavour to own and improve our home (and not even that, as it’s the outdoor furniture that I’m currently making, which we will take with us anyway).

At what point changes time spend on these new personal endeavours from being inspirational and energising, to laborious and draining? I’m not sure. But these thoughts have been rummaging in my mind and are perhaps a sign of that turning point being nearly met in this instance.

New beginnings

This blog is about beginning; starting, mobilising thoughts and preparing to take off in their direction. But going through this process of learning how to set up a Japanese plane, which definitely wasn’t easy, has thought me a valuable lesson. Not every begin is equal for me, or rather, there is an appropriate time for everything and perhaps now is not the right time exactly for this new hobby to fully form.

I have a dream – to start a fashion business – which is more important to me than becoming a fully-fledged woodworker, right now at least. There are many skills to learn still in designing and making clothing, that I would much rather try and focus on right now. That is not to say that I AM going to make the outdoor furniture, AND gates, and what-not else. But I don’t also have to at the same time learn how to create micron thin shavings with a tool used by highly skilled craftsmen – that can be done later in live when the time is right and focus can be concentrated towards it.

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You don’t have to

2020, what a year it has been. Might I share some thoughts on that tomorrow perhaps, if I may, I may. But not today, as today I’m trying to settle into the couch for the first time in a while. It’s (after all) the start of my holiday. And while I’m slowly adjusting to relaxation, but am still with a busy/full mind, I’m starting to observe habits of mine that I’d like to break with in the year ahead. One of those observations I’d like to capture here today as it has come back to me multiple times over the past year, is as follows;

❑ You don’t have to be interested in everything

❏ You don’t have to know everything about your interests

❑ You won’t ever be fully up-to-date, learning never stops

❑ You don’t need to collect/archive if you won’t exploit it

❑ You don’t have to rely on out-side sources for inspiration

These mental notes have came to me every now and then this year. At times I can be so soaked up by it all that I don’t actually get to think for myself anymore. I want to get back into my inspired, creative and curious self again. And no excuses; don’t fool yourself. You won’t do better when you are ahead of yourself in terms of knowledge, or references. These come with time and come when the time is ripe. I learn through practice, doing.

Do more, think less, learn later