Big Fun In the Daily Life

Once again I experienced the joys of the daily job, or as close as my work gets to being a daily job. I wonder if most people get as hung up on details as I do. Some don't, I know from experience. Plenty of others might. It is usually reserved for things like sanding teak for someone else. If it were mine I'd probably take a much easier route. When I do things someone else is paying for I try to cover any detail they may one day see.

What if they have a freak fall and land with their head stuck under the table looking up at just the right angle? I want them to look and say to themselves, "That crazy teak guy even took care of that impossible little triangle no one but the unlucky faller would ever see."

Just to give a flavor of my area in SoCal, the last two traffic reports I heard mentioned a mattress in the road on The 8, and shelves on The 5, and a ladder in on The 8. Interstates 8 and 5 are the top repositories for home furniture and extraneous construction items. If you had a knack for being in the right place at the right time, you could make a modest living off of road finds. In these allegedly depressed times, you have to keep the options open.

I realized today that I am as intensely concerned with this teak project as I would be if I were doing something that mattered to huge numbers of people and involved huge sums of money. I don't even know if this matters to the owner. Probably not a big deal. It will pay my rent and I find a degree of art in the deal so to me it is important. Making it into some kind of art, even if I am the only one that gets it, gives me some degree of satisfaction.

Mostly, since this is the way to put bread on the table for the moment, I do not want a mediocre result. That would mean that I am over-employed instead of under. It helps the ego to imagine one's self over qualified for whatever job is at hand. I prefer to consider myself an underachiever than over achiever although the truth is I do the best I can. This may be the best and most I'll ever do. I certainly like the freedom. I do have other things on the project list that do not involve teak but they may or may not ever be attacked and brought to life.

Once again, today I looked around and wondered how I got here. It is so much the right thing at this point in time. I am still grateful that I was able to make the change of everything, and that the idea to do it came to mind a couple of years ago. About 2, exactly, I think.

The Tour continues. When the time is right, well other aspects should appear. I am expecting it. I'm on thin ice in many ways, but if the ice doesn't break, that's as good as thick ice. It's a little dicier going, though.