I am quite bored of my online presence, in general. I have been on the internet since 1993 (and BBS's since 1988), and I think I am at a breaking point to be honest. I just can't really stand the online world that much. I already cut my social media (FB, IG, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) presence to almost 0 hours a week, I often even forget they exist now. I might go "Amish" soon.
On the other hand, I took up woodworking. I am working on very easy projects for now, and I am learning the best way to paint, or do finish work on wood. I am still a very early beginner, but boy, is that relaxing!
Lots of us including myself would be very unhappy if you disappeared altogether from sites like this, even if you only hung out in the non political threads... but it's great that you've taken up woodworking. May it give you years of joy amid those inevitable wtf moments any craft is only too happy to deliver!
My granddad was a banker, but once he took that hat off it was all about his gardens and yep, woodworking. In winters especially, his cellar workshop was where he could be found on weekends, from after lunch until grandma walked over to a spot in the kitchen that was approximately over his lathe down there, and stomped on the floor a few times to let him know dinner was about to be served.
Weeknights in summer as the evening wore on, he'd join us grandkids sometimes on the back porch for a few rounds of some card game and a dish of ice cream, but again in winter it was hard to pry him away from his projects. He made me a library table and refinished a cherry dining table that was a decrepit ol' thing when he bought it at an estate sale. "There are antiques," he said, loading the thing into his station wagon, "and then there's decent wood just too long punished."
He was incorrigible about tracking down pieces of walnut, cherry, tiger maple.... My grandma had to keep him from more than just speculating about what kind of fine lumber might be stacked up in old barns as we drove past them on Sunday cruises around the county back then. "Keep your eye on the road dear" usually meant we were coming up again on some barn he'd scoped out in the past and was now thinking to locate the owner's driveway...
He had that streak of perfectionism in him that Steve Jobs had mentioned was evident in the fine carpentry of his dad, Paul Jobs. My granddad always finished the undersides of tables, the backs of cabinets and even the backs of desk drawers.
"I'd always be thinking about what it would be like to have someone notice I took the shortcut..."
