I saw a dude name Sam Shoemaker post this quote on Instagram and it immediately struck a chord:
I Googled My Symptoms and it Turns Out I Just Need to Make Something With My Hands
How long has it been since I have personally made something with my hands? In the early days of Almond, that’s all I did. I started this business because I wanted to make stuff, try stuff, learn new things. And then as I’ve gotten older and Almond has grown, the actual hands-on creating is done by others and my days are spent running a business. Part of that is inevitable as we have more vendors, partners, customers, employees, and contractors than we did when I was just a kid who wanted to see what shaping a surfboard with a glass-on wood fin was like.
But beyond the vocational part of it, making something with your hands is a great way to shift gears for many of us whose jobs don’t require that anymore. There’s a great quote I heard once that says “if you work with your mind, sabbath with your hands. And If you work with your hands, sabbath with your mind.”
Food is definitely one place I put my hands to regularly. Cooking a meal from scratch is a great way to use all of your faculties to bring something together.
But I want to keep trying new projects and putting in the time to clumsily figure them out.
It’s like type 2 fun for the brain. You get the materials you need, you invest in some new tools, you start making a plan. Then you realize you’re one ingredient short so you’ve gotta decide whether to make do without or stop to go get the thing you’re missing.
It occurred to me the other day that we've gone from making things with our hands, to making things with computers, to now being able to type a prompt and let the computer make the thing for us. We're getting further and further removed from the beautiful, imperfect process of just putting our hands to something.
And Instagram culture doesn’t help. We see how perfect everyone else’s work is, know ours won’t measure up, so we don’t attempt. It’s easy to be discouraged when you’re comparing yourself to the crowd-sourced best of the best in every discipline.
Not every painting, wood carving, quilt, bowl, and meal needs to be shared. Just do it for the gift of doing it.
If this makes you want to go make something, we've got a bunch of downloadable surfboard templates you can print and trace. Or go grab a piece of marine-grade plywood and try foiling a fin.
Make a plan, put your hands to it, and make something for the joy of making something.
And if it's surfboard-related, ask us questions. We'll do our best to answer them.
