Now and Here

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Did I say that out loud?

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Yesterday I made a post which was highly personal but guarded and terribly mysterious. Today briefly I had 3 followers of this blog and then later in the afternoon I had 1. Now, I do not know if the oddball post played any part in those who had publicly proclaimed an interest in this blog pulling up stakes but noticing this and reading todays Copywrite Ink has caused me to ask the question: Was my personal post appropriate on a blog which bears my business name?
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Please, allow me to introduce myself

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Amongst other things, this blog is about self discovery and my relationship to how I earn a living. In the past I have played various roles in the trades and none of them were entirely satisfying. I have built houses the traditional way always feeling like something was amiss. I have discovered rot under homes and detected the reason behind it. I have acted as a detail man doing the final walk through on a new residence before the homeowners were given the keys. I have been in charge of subcontractors, quality control and safety and still none of these jobs on their own made me feel entirerly fulfilled.
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Art and Carpentry
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I did not grow up particularly good with my hands. I was an imagination kid who played with action figures and Dungeons and Dragons and later transformed that history of role playing into hopes of an acting career. I attended the North Carolina school of the arts for drama where I also happened to learn I was a songwriter and a harmonica player. During my second year of college I had an increasingly hard time. I began questioning several of my teachers about why various aspects of acting were as they were being taught and I remember feeling very unsatisfied with their answers. There was one teacher, Cigdem Onat , who saw right through me and told me so in an end of semester evaluation. She told me she believed that I needed to find something that was all my own. 3 months later I was gone from NCSA and after a brief layover in Chicago I found myself back in the state I grew up, in a hundred year old one room schoolhouse with a hammer in my hand.
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Carpentry and Art
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In Stewart Brand's book “How Buildings learn” there is a chapter entitled “The Low Road” in which he writes :
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“A young couple moves into an old farmhouse or old barn, lit up with adventure. An entrepreneur opens shop in an echoing warehouse, an artist takes over a drafty loft in a bad part of town, and they feel joy at the prospect. They can’t wait to have at the space and put it immediately to work.”
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He goes on to write:
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“even in rich societies the most inventive creativity, especially youthful creativity, will be found in low road buildings taking full advantage of the license to try things.”
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These two passages describe my relationship with the schoolhouse to a T. Anything and everything was game to try. Mixed styles, mixed media and found objects incorporated into designs. Demolition and additions and I am still revisiting and reworking much of what I have made over the past twenty years. My tastes have changed some along the way and I now substitute study for youthful enthusiasm but my experiments in this house are a road map for how I got to where I am today.
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Full Circle
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This blog is partially about self discovery and my relationship to how I earn a living. It did not start out this way but truthfully it is the only honest way for me to proceed and at this juncture it is very important for me to be honest. Why? Because all of my life I have been hiding who I truly am in one way or another. In my business dealings I have always been afraid I might appear too weird if I let my artistic side show. In my art I downplayed the tradesman but now I feel the first thing you see when you land on this page is true: This really is a Junction Box. A place for customers and friends to better get to know me and I them. And, like in yesterday’s post, it is a place for me to get to know myself out in the open and with the utmost certainty that I can take all the gifts and challenges I have been blessed with and make of them an honest and fullfiling way of life.
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Thanks for riding along dear reader and please, don't be afraid to chime in.
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