I recently started learning hand tool woodworking and won’t shut up about it haha. I found a few books and channels that are helpful and feel real. The more I do it, the more it’s apparent to me that many things around me are just distractions. It’s really nice to unplug from everything and make some things or practice using/sharpening my tools. Those little moments when something clicks feel weirdly fulfilling.
What do you all enjoy doing? Have you found any new passions? What do you like about it?
I’m the same way. It’s led me to one of my “sayings”,
Whatever you do, do it spectacularly. If you gotta fail, fail spectacularly.
The worst results I can get are ambiguous ones, then I have to go over every piece of input and test them individually - it’s almost easier to just abandon the question and come up with a new one.
For maybe the last decade, the last 5 years at least, my new years resolution has always been the same. Stop getting in my own way.
Ive held a stance, with myself and with other people, for as long as I can remember, that “No is always an ok answer.” This is pertinent because it keeps me fluid in my planning and taught me to table any emotional attachment and wait until I have the thing to feel the thing. The deftness of my ability to plan shouldn’t be hoisted into other people’s shoulders to bear, that’s MY responsibility, so if Im asking favors, no is ok, I’m fact finding, not emotionally blackmailing or leveraging.
That can be further refined to, Don’t stress over the Artificial. Stress is essentially burning your life force at 200%. Does stressing over paying your phone bill get you a discount on that bill? No? Then why spend currency that they aren’t accepting? (That being said, never extend real feelings to an artificial entity, real relationships require reciprocracy). Things, ALL things, will be done when they are done. It is as direct and as vague as you want it to be. It’s been that way for all time. Always. Just like we will never know the end of Pi, or simultaneously witness the ends of the superposition of an atom, life is just “fuzzy.” You’re welcome to scream about that into the void if you want, if you need more ways to come at the absurdity if it all. But again, things will be done when they are done. Putting an artificial time limit on it won’t change that. Getting upset over trivial missed deadlines is you getting upset about something that was never real in the first place. That is literally you getting in your own way. Spending currency that they aren’t taking.
As such, if I find out or am shown I’m wrong in any way, I acquiesce and admit. I’m not perfect, that’d be boring anyways, and doubling down on error just makes you look so soooo much worse than saying “ah shit, I didn’t realize, my bad, fucking thanks mate.” I lose NOTHING in the exchange. Nothing that I’d want to keep anyways. The truth has got to be holier than personal attachment, otherwise there is no objective reality, and therefore no way for us to ever truly be seen or known, or understood. Which I’m convinced is what we all ultimately want. Acknowledgement, understanding and vindication.
The only failure is the failure to learn the lesson.
The grace to live this seems so rare in people it’s like a super power.