Unskilled Labor

why ?

With a well-honed smartass-edge, Bob asks "what makes you want to work on the kayak again all of a sudden?"

The basic answer is that my motivation to work on various things is a process I don't fully understand (sometimes not at all). I went from being upset that I had acted on this foolish, naive, dumb idea to build a kayak and wishing I hadn't and being depressed at the idea of abandoning the project (and all the money that went with it) to being totally on fire to work on it again.

[This same sort of thing happens with my research and desire to learn to cook well.]

I still think the idea of me building a kayak was naive (foolish and dumb sometimes, naive always), but I am back to having the constructive attitude I began with (*ahem*) and thinking that first and foremost, the project is an excuse for me to become familiar and maybe even a little competent with working with my hands and tools and wood. By far the secondary goal is for me to end up with a boat of my own. It would have been far easier, faster, and - I am beginning to realize - cheaper for me to just buy a shiny new kayak. But that would be too easy, wouldn't it? And I will be extremely proud of this when (if) I am done.

Anyway, I think the sudden move toward wanting to work with physical objects was partially driven by being frustrated on the abstract math / software front I deal with regularly in my (currently stagnated) research.

Also, looks like I will be moving out of the basement house this summer, so it's now or probably never on doing some building.

Finally, the spark that made the fire: Steve and I spent a little time at the WAC trying to fit Spoon into various boats (alas, even the double kayak person-hole is a little bit too uncomfortable for her) the other day. The final verdict was that she was going to be a canoe dog (no kayaking for spoon), so I decided to check out used canoes, hoping to find one for ~$50 (ha ha). I thought, I can store it in my space at the WAC boathouse! Since it doesn't look like I'm going to have a kayak to store there.

I was just searching around online for used boats and.... inexplicably was overcome with enthusiasm to continue working on my own boat.

Posted by mel at May 2, 2005 04:22 PM