A Life Lesson Through Woodworking

I've been thinking a lot about my whittling/woodworking experience yesterday. Though I'm probably only about halfway through whittling out my archery bow, I've grown to love the process of whittling. There is something strangely cathartic about striking a piece of wood with a sharp knife, over and over again, taking off one tiny sliver of wood at a time. I'm learning a life lesson from this process. If you don't mind, I'd like a second of your time to explain my epiphany here.

My light bulb realization-

Mastery takes hard work, painstakingly slow, often painful, hard work. To be good at anything, to accomplish anything of value takes pain, time and dedication. This may sound simple enough, but truly think about it. I'll use myself as an example. All of my life, I've tried to avoid confrontations; but not just with people, with activities as well. This explains why I never reach my goals in my hobbies. As soon as the going gets too hard, I quit and switch over to something easier; choosing short term pleasure over long term gain. Explains why I've struggled at becoming a successful author. I'm always such in a rush to publish something, the quality and quantity of my published works suffer.


Sure, I've had moderate success with my only fully finished book- Poked and Prodded, but that is only after I took the time with it to do the necessary revisions, rewrites, and edits which brought the story to the standards it should have been at when I first published it. Now, after putting in the difficult work I should have put into it before publishing, Poked and Prodded is a book I am proud to promote and sell. But from start to its finished state took over three months, not including the time it took to write it! Mastery takes hard work. A type of hard work that takes slow precision and dedication to the craft. A type of hard work that has never come naturally to me.

Starting today, I'm going to switch my focus. Instead of driving for short term goals and rewards, I will be shooting for longer lasting, harder to achieve, long term goals and rewards. This is not to say I am going to stop my year long challenge. I will continue reaching my monthly goals. However, I will not take the easy, fast routes to achieve these goals. I will work through the pain and work through the seemingly impossible hard work to achieve my goals. This may mean that some of my goals I will not be able to reach, but I am okay with that, because I will have proven something much more valuable to living a successful life. Mastery is more important than short term rewards.

Mastery is painful. Mastery is hard. Mastery is not easy. Mastery causes problems. Mastery seems impossible, at times. But mastery is worth all of this. When you see your finished product exceed your wildest expectations in the marketplace, when you achieve the highest prize in your field, when you know your best work is shown, seen, and shared by others, the feeling of utter jubilation and pride you experience is unmatched by any short term reward.

So shoot for mastery. Endure the pain. Push on. And one day, you will look back and decide:

it was all worth it.

-And so, in the spirit of pursuing the long term, I will be removing the first part of Life Through Our Eyes from Amazon on Monday. I know now that it will be better to wait to reveal Life Through Our Eyes until I am completely finished writing, editing, revising, and rewriting it to perfection. I don't know when this will be, but I know that when Life Through Our Eyes is published again, I will be proud of it.  

Making My Bow and A Three Day Free Sale!

I had a few hours of free time today. What did I decide to do? First, I've published the first installment of Life Through Our Eyes. 

Starting tomorrow, Friday, you can download the first 33 pages of Life Through Our Eyes for Free!

Please, try it out. There's nothing to lose. Well, except for the one hour you will spend reading the first few chapters. I won't be able to refund you that hour, unless someone invents time travel by then. Hey, it's possible.

Second, I started work creating my bow. Unfortunately, I haven't received the wood plater I ordered from Amazon yet, so I had to improvise. Today, I worked on whittling down the osage orange wood stave using a kitchen knife. Let me pause here to say I know whittling out an archery bow with a kitchen knife is unconventional. But I was excited to get started today, even if that meant being unconventional. But don't worry, I was safe.

Wood whittling rule #1: Always cut away from your body. Always. Always. Always. Whittling is a type of cutting that uses a substantial force, and slips are common. That's why you must always cut away from your body and your hands. A single slip could lead to a bad cut or worse. So unless you don't mind potentially cutting off your fingers, cut away from your body. 

Want to see how far I got on my bow today? Mind you, I whittled tirelessly for about five hours straight and this is what I have to show for it:

Ta-da! Yea, okay, it's not that impressive. Especially considering this picture makes my half-whittled bow look like a skinny toothpick. 

I can't wait for my wood planer to come in.

A Brief Writing Digression

I've had fun in the last two days telling people about my upcoming experiment to build my own archery bow. Unfortunately, I can't start that process until everything I have ordered from Amazon and Ebay come in. To my best estimation, all of my supplies should come in by Wednesday of next week. What am I going to this week then?

I've finished my robotics project.
I'm waiting to start the archery project.
Time to write.

This week, I'll have three full days, starting tomorrow, to write to my heart's content. Woo!
Now, I do want to pause my passion for this upcoming writing project to confront some previous words I've posted on this blog. Earlier this month, I said I wasn't going to write anymore this summer for money. Well, I'm going to bend this rule slightly. I have a Y.A. novel bouncing around my mind that just needs to be written. If I can get it done in time, in these next three days, I will be posting it on the Amazon Kindle store.

I'll give you a sneak peak at the cover of my yet-to-be-written Y.A. novel: