“Putting yourself to the test”
It’s so common, in the area of hobby woodworking. To feel like you are inadequate, that you are simply an imposter. And this feeling is natural.
No matter what our primary job is, we are only trying to emulate something we feel is ideal, and this area is where people tend to feel a little like frauds. When we get into any hobby, we are simply doing the part of becoming a new person. But then we start to ask ourselves: What am I doing? Why am I doing this?
As I myself have done this, I’ve been asking this question over and over, only to come to a conclusion that I enjoy the act of challenging myself.
Woodworking is unlike the hobby of guitars or building model cars. And I don’t mean to denigrate those, but it’s a tool heavy hobby. It requires people to pass a hurdle of sourcing their own tools and then tuning and using them.
And in this realm of Woodworking, that used to be the case. Everyone had a task assigned to them to complete, from hand sawing, chopping trees, and dimensioning lumber. It was such an involved human process. There was also the added benefit of being constantly active in this hobby.
It’s easy to have the ideal of a person, but to actually engage with the concept and prove yourself to something. It does leave you with an incredible feeling.
I participated in a 5k race a couple of years ago, which meant I had to go for freequents runs and jogs to keep up a good endurance for the race. When it came to the day of the race, I felt like training did yield good results. But then, at the very end, I began to wonder why? Why did I do this and sign up for it? I asked myself why I was running.
Now, this might have been from the exhaustion, but I don’t know if anyone else has had this, but the manifesting of this internal part of myself. That nagging feeling of doubt, I still was running the race. But this moment played our in my mind, and I confronted it by simply continuing to run.
When it comes to hobby of woodworking, and the intense physical labor behind it, it sucks! The conditions can be horrible, and yet I still do it. I’m still testing myself
The accomplishment of finishing that race was never lost on me, and although that was years ago, it stuck with me. And through woodworking, I have come to understand the beauty of absorbing yourself in manual work. The act of being your own system of efficiency, and figuring out what methods work and what doesn’t is quite something. And comparable to my 5k experience.
Training for something like running, well it’s training, putting your body from a certain place to improve strength and stamina, that is the basic ideal of why we run. And that challenge and improvement is part of it. Training in the woodwork sense is constant, and our body and mind is also sharpening itself to improve in certain areas through repeat failures and repetition. The act of hand hewing, and eventually reaching this point where you can flatten a beam from a log? That is similar to me as preparing for a 5k race.
And sometimes, we do feel a bit silly when it goes awry. When I was logging some ash wood by hand, I felt frustrated with how long it took and how much actual effort I needed to use the log saws I had some experience in sharpening, but not a lot. It also took me hours to actually acquire usable lumber for my woodworking. But after the initial experience, I got better and dedicated myself to improving in this area. My endurance got better, and I got physically stronger from that and kept going back and having a better experience.
Once you jump through the hurdle and push through the feeling of “why do I do this?” You can look back on the achievement itself and gain perspective, and then continue doing it. Similar to exercise, this hobby in itself is an endurance test.
This is a bit silly from the outside, especially given that this hobby and most of the other ones have been taken over by marketing and forum sites like reddit.
The way you separate yourself is by going with a cheaper route as a beginner, buying a used tool and trying it out, and then opting for the more efficient product if you feel it’s necessary, this is actually true in the woodwork and handtool world.
But we also have merits. It’s a given that when you do something impressive through sheer willpower, persevere past that part of your brain that tells you “this sucks” you can actually feel like you’ve achieved something. And people who might think it’s silly are impressed by it, but so should you. The person who tested their limits, that’s the reason why we do this hobby. Despite it being miserable. We love the feeling and achievement we get, and I imagine you’ll feel like you have proved something.
That’s the thing, the conclusion I came to at the end of my 5k, and it’s relation to everything I do in life continuing from then, is that I did it for myself. And that’s the same as why I harvest logs and trees by hand despite it taking longer, there’s a certain perspective I get that allows me to continue along, this test, and passing it.
Ultimately, I don’t know where I’ll be, years from now, but I am a workhorse individual, and I’ll keep throwing myself at it and taking on new challenges, and maybe I’ll fail, but then that will be an opportunity to learn. And if I succeed, then I will keep going at it.
And we continue moving through our hobby, and it’s affects on our life and our main employment, but the point is to continue endeavoring and moving forward to gain this new identity and to challenge ourselves. So good luck with it, and keep improving!
