The Craftsman

The sun has set on another weekend, Sunday has slipped away as quickly as dusk fades to darkness of night.  My body retires inward on itself and the whiskey from my glass, a generous pour, clouds my mind as though it were tendrils of smoke gathering beneath a canopy of leaves, slipping out where it can but generally filling the space it has, causing vision and voice and senses to fail entirely before I close my eyes and drift to sleep, letting the smoke find its own way out.

The sun will rise on a new day tomorrow and I will hang my tools bags from my shoulders and hips and fill them with tools and nails and go about my day in a fashion that befits a professional carpenter in the company of other professionals, with due diligence to the task at hand, frugal with my motions and cuts and precise with my measurements and decisions.  Comfortable in the world in which I work.  Unremarkable in my quality and technique but efficient and pragmatic and effective towards a finished product that meets and exceeds the expectations and demands set forth.  Tight with my joints and miters and precise with my nailing, a craftsman in his element doing what he is trained to do.

At the end of the day a craftsman is what I am, really, skilled and trained and having an eye for detail but without the flare of the artists or visionaries who share my trade.  It has become quite clear that I lack the qualities of the woodworkers and tradesmen that make their trade an art, the small details that separate the artist from the craftsman.  There is little to discern in quality or technique but the artist finds the details that bring out something new and different in the often mundane details of framing and finish and separate themselves from the pack in this way.  I am comfortable to admit I lack the qualities of a the tradesman as artist and plateau graciously as the craftsman instead.

This isn't to say I don't take a great measure of pride in my work or put in the effort it takes to create a visual pleasing and well crafted end product, au contrair, I do.  I want my work as a carpenter to with stand the test of time function for the needs of homeowners today and stand for posterity so that in a hundred years, when the houses I have remodeled or built are remodeled again, the workers can look at what I've done in much the same fashion I have looked at what builders from a hundred years ago have left me -- a look of wonder at the care and quality that had come before, houses and barns and office buildings and warehouses built by hand, using hand tools, carefully fitted together with attention to detail...the work of professional craftsman.