Power tools. Wood. Creating. There was almost something therapeutic about it. Taking the raw wood, with it’s knots and imperfections and cutting it into strips. Perfecting the strips and gluing them together and finally, cutting it all into a rectangular shape. Sanding away the rough spots, embracing the tiny places where the router had dug too deep, or where I had failed to guide it.
I love digital work as much as a bird loves a french fry. Photoshop. Illustrator. Movie making. Photo filtering. Typing out thoughts in a blog post. Poster creating. I love a good visual.
But this project? The tactile aspect of sanding wood. The lack of the “undo” button. The woodchips that stick to your skin. The way a knot can reshape your project or a change in the grain can add surprise beauty. All I made was a small rectangular cutting board. But it was more than that. It was a tactile reminder of creating with raw materials. The importance of making sure our students get their work off of servers, beyond the iPad Camera Roll, out of the cloud, and into their hands. Publishing books, displaying movies in a public setting, building prototypes with cardboard, 3d printing designs and testing them, lasercutting and wiring a light, dreaming up a new invention and creating it.
These things all take precious time. Like a two night woodworking class. Time I definitely didn’t have to give up in my busy week. But, time I made that turned out to be worth far more than I thought it would. The balance of disconnecting digitally to reconnect with your own thoughts somehow. Making changes you and opens up new parts of yourself that you’ve forgotten about, or that you didn’t even know existed.
It’s why I’ll never be able to make a list of stuff to put in a makerspace. That internal connection with creating can’t be simplified into a list. If you try to, you’ll miss out on everything that’s so wonderful about making in the first place. And I saw that in the grain of the wood tonight. I’m just glad I made time to see it.
