Tchair.org blog

Finding time to write.

I decided to try to do a reflection exercise in order to try to break the cycle of rushing through the project to get to more projects. I am noticing more and more that I do this with anything I do. Work and hobby, which very quickly becomes more work so that sometimes I hide at work from the stress of hobby.

So the idea is to schedule time, every day, to write down a few lines of reflection about what I was doing and how it felt. Since I have not done anything in the shop this morning, I will just do this as a practice and reflect on a few thoughts that have gone through my mind in the last few days.

I counted how many chairs I am working on at the same time. I don’t mean that I am physically working on all of them at the same time, but they have been started and are in the shop right now. There are two Jennie Alexander chairs (rear posts are bent and rungs shaped to octagons for one of them), Boggs side chair (back posts are steam bent a few years ago and rungs are in the kiln), Balloon back rocker (milk paint is done and first coat of oil is on and drying) and a Democratic chair (all the parts are rough shaped except for the stretchers).


I also noticed that was rushing through shaping of the parts for the JA chair because I was trying to get to the next chair. Shaping parts from  fresh oak, sitting in the shaving horse, covered in shavings with Digit at my side trying to catch shavings as they fall on her back is one of the happiest moments I can imagine, yet I was rushing through it.


 

So this exercise will hopefully help me brake the cycle of “work fast, start more projects, drown under the weight of the to do list” and replace it with “enjoy what I am doing as I am doing it or at least while I am writing these reflections.



             




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