I'm Not That Person Anymore
NOTE: You will experience many many issues with syntax and grammar if you read this document. These are intentional. For better or worse. So it goes. I'm also legally obligated to mention that if you click a link to Amazon from this document that they may some day pay me a referral fee. The point is the books and you could likely find these at your favorite bookstore.
“The reward for good work is more work.” - Tom Sachs
there’s something I feel like I need to tell you dear reader-friend, visitor, the self-reflexive me who feels compelled to write these words that I found a way to very suddenly correct all of my habitual typing errors and also that I want to return to the hypertextual and poetical yes it is a word because I read it in the poems and pages of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” or maybe “Specimen Days and Collect”
style of writing that was introduced here as These Things which of course are simply inspirations and fascinations that like this story I feel I need to share I feel like I need to share inspirations and fascinations because as Deepak Chopra explains each meditation
before we begin the meditating in his highly recommended meditation series with Oprah about getting unstuck that a dear friend gifted to me that I should not refer to my old self as real or objective and that when I become aware of the same old thoughts running through my head or the same old words talking through my mouth which I do this same old words talking through my mouth thing a lot that I should pause and say or think
“I am not that person anymore” and so I’m working on it but this story I feel I need to tell you is very much about something that happened to me that made me not that person anymore too though it’s not a salvation story or a hitting the bottom kind of thing see I was
watching Van Neistat’s new YouTube channel called “The Spirited Man” where he has created an objective avatar for himself called the spirited man which allows a seeming objectivity in his storytelling that allows him to what’s the word for how he no longer needs the word “I” because of this objectivity and is likely the literally best creative content
on YouTube at the moment which doesn’t take away from how much I love “what does the fox say” or mostly any bicycling video edited by XXXXX but in a recent episode of “The Spirited Man” Van talks about something he learned from the artist Tom Sachs which is where the quote comes from at the top of this page and I was reminded of
have you seen Tom Sachs’ short film “Love Letter to Plywood” where in it he describes the practice I’ve known and used for thirty-five years but I’m feeling what Steven Pressfield describes in his and highly recommend book “The War of Art” and in this interview/podcast with Rich Roll that
Resistance with a capital R is keeping me from coming right out with this story that I feel like I need to share and that which changed my life and the too little too late reason I spent the money on a Sawstop table saw now and here’s the easy math for you who haven’t decided it’s worth it because I’ve been a woodworker without incident for thirty-five years starting in high school
as a shop kid who loved English and physics but also loved working with wood too throughout high school and then after college working construction jobs learned how to respect and safely operate the table saw which Sachs refers to as a witch which will take your finger and then he goes on to when you’re at the table saw you’re cutting wood and you’re not thinking about anything else and I even check my emotions before
turning on the saw like I learned to do when I got my drone pilots license about situational awareness and emotional status and why is it so difficult to say a thing we know we need to do around 4pm on November Second last year I was cutting
one by ten pine to three and a half inches which is beyond the limit of when one should use a push tool but I didn’t and so just like Sachs says it will take your finger but really the not using push tools was more like I offered fully aware my right index finger to the construction grade from a big box hardware table saw that I paid $400 for and it really did hurt more than just about anything I’ve experienced
outside of second grade in a public elementary school in Arkansas which is I think where I’m supposed to pause and consider “I’m not that person anymore” but I’m also not the person anymore with ten fingers which has somehow corrected my typing mistakes and even though I’m not quite as fast as I was yet I’m back in the shop again and making things with my nine and a half fingers but putting on socks is still really hard for now.