Good morning, and it is a good morning for e at least. Of course I hope everybody is having a good morning. At least the people that didn’t have a good morning yesterday, I hope they are having one and to those who did have a good morning yesterday, whatever is probably fine for them. For me things are good. I got through the bulk of my interaction with the woodworking show. We had a lot to build yesterday because the venue(ChoCho) wouldn’t let us set up the showcase in advance, so we basically built 4-6 rooms yesterday to display the furniture in. At the end of the day I was happy with how much work I had done judging by how exhausted my body felt. I learned a good deal about construction yesterday too, so that was nice. I felt like the operation was poorly managed though. I want to talk to Justin, the student who is a retired Navy officer, what he thought about it from a leader’s perspective. I know I always overestimate what I’m capable of, but honestly when it comes to being a leader, I’ve never encountered a problem I couldn’t lead the group through. That’s why I would think if I knew what the plans were, I could have delighted people more effectively than yesterday was. Maybe there’s a future for me in construction management, I do like working alone though. I do think a fault of mine as a leader is great man syndrome, that I try to be the shinny example in so many different areas that when I’m gone, people don’t know where to turn, that’s why now I place a heavy emphasis on proper work delegation. After work, we went out for drinks to celebrate Shelley not quitting her job and Jess, her sister’s, birthday. I don’t know if woodworking has gotten me to come out of my shell more or I just don’t get out of the house enough but I was talking to anyone who came near me last night and basically dominated the conversations. I was just trying to tell some jokes and have fun and there were some people who were into it and told their jokes. I’d prefer to let other people shine, I’m just prepared to help out if they don’t want to. I hope I didn’t annoy anyone too much though.
Showtime
I can’t believe we made it to November already. We’ve got a lot of 1’s in the date today. Yesterday ended up not being too weird of a day. We spent the first two hours of woodworking class talking about morals and religion I guess. I was talking with John Mark, so most conversations lean towards religion with him. I really let the guys know a lot about my personality with that conversation, so let’s hope they aren’t wielding pitch forks today when I show up. Other than that, the day was pretty normal, we moved a bunch of furniture into the ChoCho for the big show that starts today, so no idea what today will be like, I’ll actually be talking to the public, so that’s scary. Yesterday I also got better with the box planer so I squared up my ends for the tool box. I’d like to move forward but I have a feeling the show will put that on hold for a couple weeks. Hopefully the show brings in a lot of work for the school, so I’ll get to learn how to make all that beautiful furniture I moved. There was a table we moved, I asked Bill the director of the school how much it would cost in wood and he said around $600. It was a amazing table and I am making one as soon as I can because that price would be ridiculous. After school, Shelley’s sister came over, we had cupcakes and sang happy birthday to her. Then I was off to drawing. I’m happy that I’m posting on instagram because it helps push me to at least have something to post where I might not of drawn yesterday because I would say I was tired. Pretty much the same thing I do with weight lifting, but I want to make sure I’m lifting on school days as well. Another interesting thing happened at school where Bush sawed too far into his wood, he really beats himself up when he makes a mistake, and yeah I can see that I do the same thing with other aspects of life. When I see someone else doing it though, it really looks ridiculous to be so upset about something so small. I tried to talk to him about it, but I know he’s not going to want to talk in that moment and I have to be more subtle than, “Don’t beat yourself up.” I’m trying to figure out some way to help him.
Wet Dog
It’s a new morning, 6:45 am. I wonder if it’s going to be a strange day because I woke up at 6 because I’m still trying to reset the timer for the coffee, so instead of 6:25, it went off at 5:55. I let Winnie, my dog, out to pee then as well and laid back down but couldn’t sleep and had to go number two. I got up, did my thing and got ready to write this when I hear the dog barking. Shelley, my wife, let him out back because he threw up in his crate. It feels like a very eventful day that’s less than an hour old. Today I’m going to the woodworking school and we’re getting ready for our “Show and Sell” at the ChooChoo, so I’m expecting that we’ll be moving furniture and building mock rooms down there to display it in. It is raining pretty bad today so that will make it interesting. I’m going to bring my poncho and might as well bring and extra shirt. Yesterday I was getting a bunch of this social media stuff figured out. It’s been years since I was actually involved with any sort of online presence and these app change fairly frequently. I suppose they change frequently in small ways so the users don’t complain, but when you don’t use an app for over a year it’s like going to a new city, everything looks off and your old sense of direction doesn’t seem to work. I understand the apps keep making changes so that people are getting a new experience and they don’t get bored of coming back, but that is exactly my complaint about the tech world, and I suppose you could say it’s human nature. Facebook, instagram, twitter, they already do a thing they’re known for, there’s no need to add more. In fact I think a lot of companies see problems because they attempt to be a site for everything which of course means they get nothing right.
Introduction
This is my first post so I guess a lot should be explained. I’ll try to cover everything I think is important, but there’s no rush to get it all at once, so stick around and I’ll explain myself properly eventually. First, I’m here because of a book called The Artist’s Way, there’s an exercise in there called the morning pages where you write for two pages. I assumed the author meant two hand written pages and I translated that to 300 words, so I try to write 300 words a day. I don’t always succeed at writing my morning pages, but I think doing them has been very good for my mental health, so I try to keep it up. I’ve someone recently opened up to letting my wife read my morning pages and it has been a positive experience and I’m currently starting to share more of my life with instagram and twitch, so I figured I would make my writings public as well. If someone wants to watching even a second of my life, there may be more of it they’re interested in and who am I to withhold what the people want. I guess that explains why I’m here, to explain what I write, it can be anything. Usually I will just recount what happened to me the previous day and add what my thoughts of the even were, but sometimes my mind won’t do that and it just starts in the middle of a fictional story. I’m just trying to type whatever comes to mind. To let you know a little about me, it’s complicated and you’re not going to get to know me better than through checking back in and reading my morning pages, following my instagram and watching my twitch stream. This is so weird, it seems a little un-human, but what other creature could do such a thing. We failed at making a machine into a man, so we’re trying to go the other direction.
Chris' Morning Pages 