What is it… I’m doing here?
It’s hard to say.
I don’t mean that I am unsure what I am doing. I’m pretty clear in my purpose. It’s just difficult for me to articulate, because what I am up to here is more intuitive than rational. I have this sense that there is something important to learn about what it means to do a thing well – and how people come to do their thing well – which inheres in stories of striving after excellence in mundane endeavors. So I am going to write some of those stories to see if I can figure out what I think.
There are several things I strive to do well: music, cooking, mechanicing, making stuff, teaching, writing… so those are the kinds of stories that are likely to show up here. It is not the content of the stories that matters (to me) though. I am after an understanding of what underlies them. I want to know about approaching an endeavor as a craftsperson. I am convinced that craftwork is at the core of being human – and because it is, most of us don’t notice when we are doing it – and aren’t noticed for it. It is the ordinary, everyday experience of doing things well for the sake of doing well the things we find important. And part of what makes us each unique is the particular set of things that matter enough for us to do well – regardless what anyone else thinks.
In writing this stuff, I am working my writing craft as a way to both get better at it and to better understand the nature of all craft. I suppose I am hoping to tell mundane stories interestingly, in order to better understand the ordinary human experience of doing good work.
I can’t imagine that makes sense at this point. But if I accomplish my goal here, it will.
In fairness, I haven’t worked out whether I am just copying my friend Adam, because I love the way he renders authentic, day-to-day learning that is so central to being human (or horse). I think my different contexts can illuminate complementary parts of the scene. But even if I don’t add new insights by capturing stories in my own contexts, I do need to get back into shape as a writer. Too much time spent on a rich diet of reading other people’s ideas, without enough working out my own has left me sluggish and lacking momentum.
Sooooooo….
here goes.
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A Note about the title:
We all have complex histories with loved ones. And, as much as I loved my mom, few things irritated me more than when she started a question with “Soooooooo…” It was a signal. She was about to ask a question that was going to piss me off. I knew her for almost 4 decades, so I knew perfectly well, she was either uncomfortable and trying to fill silence – or she didn’t have even the beginning of the background to understand an answer to the question she was about to ask. If it was the former, the question that was about to come was going to be inane and she wasn’t actually interested in the answer – meaning she wasn’t really going to listen to the answer, and would likely end up asking the same question to fill some future silence as well. If the latter, then a seemingly endless string of questions was about to commence – as from someone who had walked in during the climax of a movie and wanted to be caught up from the beginning (which she did habitually as well).
Honestly, it should not have been a big deal. There was nothing wrong with the questions, or the making of conversation. But it’s part of that complex history that entails me having been around her a whole bunch while I was a teenager: it was a thing that somehow activated that vestigial petulance, so immediately got under my skin – for entirely irrational reasons.
In any case, a couple of years ago, I was listening to a recording of myself conducting an interview… and you can imagine my horror as I realized I started every question with “Soooooo…” Every. Damned. Question.
Shit.
I’d become my mom.
Soooooo, I’ve decided I may as well own it. Because, here’s the thing about those complex family histories: of all the people I hope to emulate, there is absolutely no one else I’d rather be.