Shifting Patterns

It is now winter and I need to settle down to work – to really work on the business – the making of stuff, the promotion of stuff, hopefully even the selling of stuff. Once again, this means looking at how I do things and what will get me motivated.

Winter sets in at Wareham for another year

I've been doing lots of little bits of tidying up – clearing little annoyances off the lists to help clear a path for me to have less that can potentially “call me away” from the tasks before me. Once again, I'm studying my spaces – particularly my desk, to try to figure out what will work for me. I already know that I need to like a space to want to work there. A good space helps draw me to it, gives me an anticipation and excitement, inspires me. That doesn't mean it has to be beautiful or perfect – but it has to have an inviting energy...I guess that's the best way for me to describe it. It has to be comfortable or I will spend my time being distracted by all the things that serve as an irritation in the space.

I need too, to find my groove. I've been trying different patterns of the day to see what fits. For a while I was working on the pattern my partner uses – practical in many ways, particularly in the wintertime when it is colder. It seemed a good fit, since I have a more nocturnal habit and I prefer my waking to be a more relaxed affair.  Get up, make tea, go to the computer and start there – doing email, communications, writing and all that. Then move on to the other work – the making and doing late morning or after lunch, depending on how much time the computer work took.

I've been trying to make that pattern work for quite a while now, because it is good logically. I'm finally admitting that it does not work for me. I get onto the computer and I get lost. I lose my drive, I lose my creativity, I lose my will. I find it draining.

The computer is something that I find useful, but I've never become enamoured with digital tools. When I am brutally honest, I kind of hate most computer work. It is okay for writing, and some of the stuff can be interesting for a short while. Figuring out how a program works and what it can do for you, the ability to do print work and manipulate photographs for use can be interesting. It doesn't hold me though, and it carries as much frustration as it does interest. There is too much relying on something I only vaguely understand for me. And it is constantly changing, not just the how but the rules and the speed and the capacity. There is too much time wasted on things that are "necessary evils,"(no offense meant to all the computer oriented people out there.

I've also done enough time working in offices where the computer was where I was stuck all day (or all night) that it has always represented work for me, and not my favourite work by any means. I know just enough about them that certain things are very easy for me, and I type well enough that they are an incredibly useful tool. I know just little enough about them that I find them frustrating and often arbitrary, temperamental and sometimes vindictive toward me. They have been known to inexplicably cut me off from what feels like lifetimes of work with no recourse. I can see the file, but I can't open the file – or some such madness. The computer and I are not best friends.

My desk is nice and close to the stove.

I still like handwriting things, stories, poems, letters. I type faster than I write, but I like the feel of writing. When I read, I take notes by hand – the act of writing the notes out helps me to cement the knowledge in my brain. I have noticed that the more time I spend on a computer the less I am able to remember things I know that I know. And I can tell that the increased screen time is beginning to mess with my eyes – and as a wigmaker particularly, my eyesight is something that is very dear to me.

So I am trying new patterns. Read first thing in the morning – whether for work or pleasure. Come to the computer at lunchtime or thereabouts....and limit it to lunchtime, then another quick shot at the end of the day just before dinner. Take days off, entirely, from it...something I used to do with regularity and do rarely in recent months. Ideally I will start with a walk in the morning – or most mornings. Or stretching at least – something active rather than sedentary. The computer may get relegated entirely to just before dinner, at least some days. I know there will be days, if I am to manage to survive, that will have to be all computer – the digital world will demand it. But I can hope that they will be strategic, rather than habit.

There will be lots of patterns tried and tossed, I'm sure, before I find the one that works here, in this space and time. I am just glad that I've stopped following blindly based on habit and trying to convince myself that I can make something so unsuited to me work.  With every step, I learn - (or I hope I do.)  There is lots of winter left.  Come spring, patterns will shift again.

Shop Renovation 2020 Project Part 1 – Laying the Groundwork.

Yes, my shop is being reworked yet again. For those of you who know me it may seem like I spend more time reorganizing my spaces than working in them. And that is a fair judgement. Some of that is because I face very specific challenges in any workshop. For those of you who don't know me, I'm small. My partner likes to describe me as “all of five foot nothing” but he is being generous. By several inches. I don't know my exact height out of spite. It is the question I am asked most often bar none “How tall are you?” I am slightly taller (maybe a quarter of an inch) than my mother ever got to. But she carried herself better. I am somewhere just under 4'10” ish. I think. But I know I don't reach the lofty height of 5'.

So yes, nothing is the right size for me. And it makes it harder than I realize. I have always just adapted, no big deal. Except that it turns out it is a huge deal sometimes. The first time my partner saw me work he was amazed that I managed to get anything done at all. By that time I'd been smithing a few years and had my own setup for a couple of years at least. It was all stuff I'd managed to procure with the help of friends, and cobbled together in my city backyard. I'd adjusted what I could, but I didn't have a chainsaw and wasn't going to buy one just to cut down the stump my anvil sat on. I dug stuff in a bit where I could, and it seemed to work alright.

My partner, Darrell Markewitz, is an excellent teacher for all things smithing and history – particularly of iron and Viking Age, and iron smelting / experimental archaeology - especially as it relates to the Viking Age. He is one of a small handfuls of teachers I would recommend if you are interested in Blacksmithing – and he, in particular tends to focus on body dynamics as it suits the individual. He is not a great bear of a man himself, though he is tall (especially compared to me). He was constantly told he could not do this because his build was too light. Long after many larger smiths had dropped out due to injury he is still going. He has figured out a thing or two.

Needless to say, when he first saw me working he was (slightly?) appalled. I scoffed a bit and said it was fine. Not just a bit of my attitude comes from trying to prove that I can carry my weight, and yours (once upon a time, literally) in spite of my size.

When we (many years after we initially met – probably more than a decade?) ended up together and I ended up moving here to Wareham, he was determined that my shop would fit me better. So that was one thing. And it did. It fit me better than it ever had before. But I knew that I still didn't know enough to know what I wanted it to be. 

 How I was really going to work in the space. What I really needed rather than just thought I wanted. So it has remained a semi-permanent space that is somewhat less cobbled together. I argued to keep the dirt floor that I had so carefully dug all those damn rocks out of (though inevitably more appeared with the frost heave, but less, and much slower.) It was a better fire retardant, I didn't have to worry about dropping things on the floor or things cooling on the floor. I could dig things in a bit, mold the floor a bit, change things with ease.

All those points were true. I have now opted for a wooden floor, level, predictable, less inviting to the cat and other wildlife. I suspect it will be a bit warmer (a very tiny bit). Also easier to move heavy equipment over without a corner suddenly digging in, or a rock saying hello. Also better for keeping the equipment that is not in constant use (like my awesome stakes) in better condition because even if it is on the floor it is not in the dirt and significantly less damp.

As I mentioned, when I initially moved in in 2014, (or sometime shortly after I moved in) before any of the equipment went in, I dug into the floor somewhere between 18-24 inches removing all the significant rocks I could find. Many of these were a tad large (like the size of a milk crate) and there were even more that were head sized (mine), fist sized (not mine), and a lot of large pebbles, with even more small pebbles. I did what I could to tamp all the dirt back down and level it, but you can imagine that with my great weight that wasn't the best of jobs. In the intervening years the floor has decided on its own unique character, changing every year, or every month, or every day. Equipment that was leveled on bricks and blocks and such has slowly sunk, inevitably crookedly, and in need of constant readjustment. So, I changed my mind about the floor. And that was the 2^nd of the big undertakings of this shop renovation. (Well, truth be told, he did the framework for the walls before he started the floor, but that was a bit less of a big deal apparently.)

The first? Emptying the shop of all that equipment and stock. I am very grateful to Darrell for undertaking this while I was still working over the winter. His argument was that he had to do it a) because he is bigger than me and b) he needed it to get moved in such a way that he could still get at everything he needed to elsewhere in the shop. I am somewhat ashamed to say I didn't put up much of an argument.

Incidentally, Darrell has undertaken pretty much all of the construction work with some minor help from me. (For example, I helped to level the dirt floor again for the stringers that run under the floor.) His argument (again?) - He is taller than me. It is, I am slowly being forced to admit, a valid argument. I am learning, after decades of being on my own and making do, that my size does actually sometimes make things harder. I am learning to accept help without it feeling like I have to do it just to prove I can. And I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to struggle less. Maybe that is the real first big job, but that one is mine alone.