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Maybe I'm turning
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On Sunday evening, my neighbour delivered a drawing of a rounded wooden peg. It was a peculiar drawing paired with bits from a decimated exemplar of such a peg. There were no further instructions, but it was an obvious kindly request. I had been bragging recently about the lathe. This is not some snazzy new tool, oh no. It is an inherited, early 20th century contraption with an 80 year old belt held together with a rather precarious looking staple.
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I spent a small bit of time making this precise wooden peg out of cherry wood from the tree that died this past winter. I don't have adequate words what I felt when I inserted it into the broken chair. My hands and my patience made this chair whole again, and I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards my fantastic neighbours for challenging my fledgling lathe skills with a practical project that required a degree of perfection I could deliver on. The peg fit like it was made for it, and indeed it was.
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We hear, from time to time, that there are things that money can't buy. A 14 - 16mm conical wooden peg with a rounded head that fits through two lopsided holes in the cross legs of an old wooden chair is one of those things. The zen-like calm of turning a piece of wood and the ecstatic joy and humbled pride that fills my heart even days later aren't purchasable either.
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Maybe I'm deferring
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The subscriber number for Freshly Brewed Thoughts hasn't fluctuated in any substantial way in years. I see the number every week and it stays just about the same. People subscribe, realise that I'm not writing what they think I should be writing, then they unsubscribe. And the number stays about the same. So thank you for being here, you've been here for a good while.
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Truth be told, I often think about taking these newsletters and posting them in a way that the Internet could find them. Posting to the algorithm. Working to get my subscriber number up. Thinking that might make getting work easier, that maybe I would get different kinds of work. Maybe someone would pay me to write a book or something.
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More often I think that I should make old newsletters searchable at least, so that I can remember wtf I said. That was why I changed the Subject format to [FBT] Something and Something else. I'm not sure anyone even noticed that, but I did it at the beginning of this year. Makes the archives more...interesting at least.
It's all a question of motivation, and while I'm motivated to continue writing to you, I'm not particularly motivated to sit here and organise myself.
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Maybe I need help?
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Next week I am going to the United States for the first time in 3 years. I have been doing more than a small amount of processing this reality. The pandemic has brought out some agoraphobic traits in me, but I say that every time I'm about to leave home. It is so weird to realise that there was a time when I was without place, an actual drifter. I wrote a book about that, once.
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