So I cancelled my Etsy shop. So many scammers and it just feels demeaning, but more than that I want the knives to be about not-productivity. Everything for me always has to be about the result; some kind of purpose and quantifiable goal. It’s what my reward system loves and makes more sense through the lens of audhd; it’s not a personal failing.
But I’m tired. Every goal line just serves as the start for the next. Every 1RM becomes your new warm up. Your volume has been cranked for so long that your speakers are starting to crackle and still you crank it further.
The art last year was about detoxing from a career in recruitment where it was all grey grey grey and then 1 or 0 with the 1 being enough money for a new car. I never got into gambling… or did I? All I can say is that the job had big ups and downs and a number in a bank account is a very easy way to quantify success. It is almost harder not to get sucked in given how our brains are wired. I guess I was lucky to have the defence mechanism encode my job null when it did. I’m not wealthy but I have enough, and my problems weren’t outside anyway.
Maybe that’s what it is about the knives. They can’t be about the outside. They can’t be about someone else or productivity or judgement of what is good or bad. They are not an explosion. I may give or sell them away at a future point but I think I need to just focus on making them for now.
Looking at each piece of steel, seeing what it wants to be, trying it out on one of this growing collection of stones, deciding where to polish what and whether to crack out the dremel.
Being happy to make mistakes.
That’s something that goes out the window if you do it for someone else or, even more, for money. There is no greater way to crush your creativity than to dance to the tune of an imaginary critic. If nothing else, you’re using your creative energies to create the critic.
Anyway I think I need to go into export mode again. It’s this cycle always and I thought I might get a break this time. I was saying to my wife in the garden about an hour ago: ‘I feel like that was a good creative spurt and wonder how long I’ll be allowed to rest; the usual half-day?’
Well yes it’s a half-day. But I think my next project will not have a finish line. The knives cannot be rushed. If you rush, you ruin. Same as the art I chose. And maybe I don’t need as much recovery because I’ve not driven myself to death.
A knife will be ready when it is ready.
A thought will be ready when its ready.
They are both for me, but some will be shared.
202506290950