gemini://shit.cx/shed/2020-11-16-a-bad-night-in-the-shed/

Last night was a bad night in the shed. To put things in perspective, a bad night there is still pretty good. But what I feared would happen, happened. The dovetails didn't work and I ruined those parts that I was showing you in the previous posts.

As a teenager, I skateboarded a lot. One of my childhood hero's, Rodney Mullen did a TED-talk about failure¹. He's a pro skateboarder -- in fact, he's the greatest pro skater ever. This is dude that gave up doing contests because he never lost. Can you imagine any other sports person giving up contests because they're too good? I wouldn't argue if someone claimed that he was the greatest sports person ever. But I digress. He did a TED-talk on failure which, despite being the greatest sports person ever, he had a lot of experience with. For in skateboarding, each attempt of a trick has a very high chance of failure and when you're starting out on a trick, there is almost no chance of success. To get good at skateboarding, you have to have first failed a lot.

There are similarities between skateboarding and hand tool woodworking (maybe woodworking with machines too, I wouldn't know). If you don't hold your body just right and move at just the time and in just the right way, you'll never land that treflip. Likewise, if you don't hold your body just right and move in the right way, your cut won't be square, or the saw will wonder, or you'll plane too much off the end, or whatever.

Sometimes when skateboarding you'll have a bad day and can't land anything but your go-to tricks. Some days, you land things you've only ever landed a few times before. And some nights in my shed, I'll ruin everything I touch.

I stayed back an extra hour and remade the parts so I'm no further behind than when I started the night... and an extra hour in the shed, even on a bad night is fine by me.

I just watched part of that TED talk again, and it covers a lot more than failure which was what took when I saw it a few years ago. It's well worth a watch. And if you've seen it before, maybe worth another watch.

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A Bad Night in the Shed