Making

Leaf-Mould

I just wrote a haiku moments ago, though to be honest I’ve been pondering it awhile and it just now coalesced:

autumn day driving
leaves littered on the long lane
whipped by my passage

And that is how much of my writing comes to be. My process is to absorb feelings, thoughts, and images. I then think about them, marinate them mentally, and wait for something to emerge from the blender of my mind.

Even while studying at university, I would wait until the last minute to write my papers, but along the way I’d have been listening in class, reading assigned material, and thinking while gazing out my dorm room window. Eventually I would just know what I was supposed to write and it would emerge on the laptop screen. Of course revising and editing would then happen, but most of the skeleton, bones, and sinew would already be laid on the table about to be animated.

It’s been the same with my poetry. I’ll have a bit of verse appear in my mind, or an entire poem (less usual), and I’ll tease it out, either on paper or in my head. Eventually I will write it down in more or less its final form. Poetry revision comes much later, usually after the poem has sat in a dusty corner and existed for a while. I will find it again, in digital file folder or physical compendium of hand-written scraps, and re-jigger and re-work, and eventually with a bit of pencil and polish, a more mature form will be set down in ink.

Maturity and time are great prisms through which to view old works. A few years ago, when I finalized a book of poetry, I found many works that were hastily returned to the cobwebbed drawers they had long lain in, but some that were worth the harsh light of cross-examination before the gentle rays of day.

I recently held a Write Night at the university where I now work. Context: I am the sole writing consultant and only card-carrying member of the Writing Center on campus. It is my job to be a resource for the student body when a piece of written material needs a second pair of eyes. It’s a great gig for 10 hours a week, and I get to interact with all sorts of interesting students and fascinating academic papers.

The Write Night I held was a first-ever Creative Write Night, during which we focused not on the academia that so largely occupies our lives, but on our innate creative selves. It was my aim to latch on to and tractor out dormant creativity in the students that showed up, and foster an atmosphere that would allow them to incorporate creativity into, shall we say, drier academic works. My success is largely unknown, but we had fun with a variety of prompts I gleaned from my undergraduate studies and re-worked for use during the Creative Write Night.

Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, who gained some measure of fame from his hobbit novels, leant a bit of assistance from the great beyond. Writing in his Tolkien: A Biography Humphrey Carpenter quotes Tolkien on the creative process:

one writes such a story not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps (131)

This is what I have tried to express about my own process. Tolkien uses the metaphor of botanical processes, of loam and dirt and detritus becoming a fertile soil from which a seed germinates into a tree with many leaves. It isn’t the leaves that make the story come to life, rather it is that nutrient-rich mud that gestates the seed. And it is that nutritious silt that is best cultivated by constantly “seeing…thinking…or reading” as Tolkien would say.

Sadly, my process of reading is in shambles. I see much and think much but of late have read almost not at all. I fear my dirt is becoming dry and desiccated and doesn’t have much to offer a seed at this point. Still, I persist. This flowering post is evidence of that. Started in the weeks preceding the Creative Write Night, continuing a few weeks ago when I shared what Tolkien had to say, and culminating tonight on this blog.

I have so much from Tolkien’s Middle-Earth studies I want to excavate, and many other works that I wish to analyze and interact with, that I feel overwhelmed. But mostly I need to get reading again. My psyche assumes it cannot, my mind sometimes will not, but my soul is yearning for more material for my “leaf-mould”. I think I simply need to give myself permission to crack spines and use my pick-axe eyes to mine the riches in pages. I have many, many volumes of deep material and only need to blast my way in. I have a feeling that once I am within word repositories, I won’t come back out except to polish what treasures I find before planting them to see what will grow.

I think now of Bilbo Baggins, a timid, shy, and frightened hobbit, sitting in his hobbit-hole being confronted by the wizard Gandalf. In the film adaptation, he is overwhelmed by the enormity of the quest the dwarves wish to undertake, and he faints. When we come back to him, he is sitting with a cup of tea in his arm chair, speaking to Gandalf:

“I just need to sit quietly for a moment.”

Gandalf retorts:

“You’ve been sitting quietly for far too long…I remember a young hobbit who was always running off in search of elves in the woods, who would stay out late and come home after dark trailing mud and twigs and fireflies…”

Bilbo is eventually convinced to run after the dwarves and find out “what is beyond the borders of the Shire” and I feel I must do the same. I must go on an adventure, and I don’t mean to come back again. I’ve been sitting quietly for far too long myself. I may not come back, and if I do, I won’t be the same RedBeard that I am now. That frightens me, but I know, too, that is for my better; my soul needs the enrichment.

I cannot stay timid and shy and afraid. I must learn and grow and explore.

Point of View

with apologies and thanks to Adam Savage

After drilling another hole in his chair, he stopped and asked himself “why?” It was at once the most important and the most insignificant question to ask. The answer is old as time, young as baby laughter, broad as the universe, and constrained as a grain of sand: because it needed to exist. For the man drilling holes, it was a culmination, of sorts, of a life journey. It was aesthetically pleasing, artistically fulfilling, manually rewarding and many, many other things all at once. It was this man’s point of view on what that chair should be made extant in the world.

Often what the rest of the world may call “creativity”, this man, Adam Savage, calls “point of view”. Creativity is contradictorily too small and too broad. Too inexact and too confining. Traditionally meaning a spark that makes something, or as Webster might say, “the ability to bring into existence” what is currently meant by creativity is better summed up in what Savage says is point of view: taking the sum of you and putting it into something because it needs to exist.

Poetry, love, dress-making, cooking, coding, carpentry, masonry, singing – the list extends as far as human nature itself – all are valid ways to express one’s point of view. That is the distillation of the why. I paint using black pigment because, for me, something needs to exist blackly. This isn’t about right or wrong, or correct or incorrect. This is about need. Mozart wrote his music because he needed that music to exist in the world. Ditto every creative act that has burst out of someone into existence: that person needed that thing to exist.

Otherwise, “creating” would be a pointless endeavor, better left abandoned to the Void. Feeding, clothing, sheltering, and surviving take enough time, energy, and thought as it is, why take that valuable temporal resource and squander it drilling holes in a chair?

Maslow, the psychologist, posited a hierarchy of needs. First is survival, last is self-actualization. Can’t have the last without the first being served, and everything else in between. While true enough on a basic level, on the quantum aspect it isn’t quite so clear cut. Yes, if you are starving, you do everything you can for food. But a starving artist will still exercise their point of view to splash color on a canvas to sell in exchange for the currency necessary to purchase bread.

How is this need manifested? For most, it is unconscious and automatic. For some it is yanked down out of the aether, for others it hits in a flash of genius, and yet it happens every single day. How much salt do you sprinkle in the frying pan? Which note follows the one just written? Which word is most fitting? How much pressure does that brick need when pressed into the mortar? All of that, and more, is part of the point of view people express every day in the mundane and the magical. An engineer uses her point of view to curve a windscreen for a new vehicle design. A mother uses point of view to soothe an upset baby. A father uses point of view to guide a child into adulthood. Yes, an artist uses their point of view to craft their art: a clay vessel, a musical opus, a novel, or a sculpture. Whether you walk quickly down the street, or saunter across the crosswalk, every decision can be seen as a microcosm of point of view expressed.

The counterpoint in skepticism says that not everything is an art, or is creative, but that is a failure to see the beauty in the humane. It is the blind man missing the sunset in his visual darkness. The sum of every step you make before the next dictates how you place your foot, how you push off the ground, whether you slide, glide, pounce, pirouette, or simply plod along the sidewalk. That could be an unconscious point of view, or for the dancer, conscious as they flutter across a garden. All of humanity is creating, exercising our own point of view, all the time.

Start thinking in terms of point of view and it changes how you see things. No longer is the creative act reserved for a few gifted individuals: now it is something everyone can access and enjoy. Evaluations are, ultimately, insignificant. I can’t write music the way Mozart did, but then, I don’t have his point of view on melody and rhythm and harmony and the aural world. What I can do, that Mozart couldn’t, is write the way I do. He didn’t possess my point of view on the written word. He didn’t craft food like any chef you might name. He didn’t play sports like any athlete. But oh! could he write music! And if you do write music, only the sum of your psyche and experience can create the music you can, that, again, Mozart never could. Mozart never rapped, or scored a film that would make an audience weep. But you can exercise your point of view to make whatever-it-is-you-make.

Adam Savage’s holy chair is full of holes, not quite how he envisioned it at first, but how it needed to be made in the end. Only he could have drilled all the holes, or polished them, or painted them, or sanded them, and crafted them just so. Only a madman would have undertaken the monumental task to take a perfectly serviceable chair and fill it full of holes. Point of view isn’t about that at all. Only a sane man like Adam Savage could take that chair and make it what it is today.

And so you.

Take your point of view and apply it to what you do, and put it into the world. Only you are able. And you need to do it, whether you realize it or not, to be completely you. And the world needs your particular flavor to be the best damn world it can be, hurtling through space and time. You never know whose life you may impact just by being you.

Adam Savage’s Holy Chair (screenshot from Tested’s YouTube video)

In the Queue

My summer goes by slowly.

Ever since the semester ended at the university, I haven’t had much work-for-pay. One job I hold there is writing consultant, meaning I assist students with their writing assignments (if they ask for help). The other job I hold is administrative assistant to one of the department heads, meaning I do anything he needs me to do in order to assist him with his duties.

The first job has mostly evaporated (temporarily) due to there being few students taking classes over the summer. The second job is hit or miss lately, with me working only when my boss has tasks for me to complete. I’m squeaking by in the pay aspect, with just enough work to keep bills paid until the fall semester will start. This is one aspect of scholastic work that I don’t particularly enjoy, at least at this university: the lack of a consistent paycheck all year ‘round.

However, with unexpected, though unpredictable, time on my hands, I have a few projects that I could work on when I don’t have much else to do.

Scanning

My mother is a shutterbug, and something of a photo collector. In the age before this one, when photography was analog, she amassed quite of lot of photographs. Now that we are living in a digital world, she would like these photos available to her on the iPad and in the cloud. That means scanning. She has procured a scanner (albeit a finicky one) that works well enough and quickly enough to scan in many photos in a session. I have already scanned a few albums worth, but have many more to scan. I think this will end up being more than a summer project, but it is in the queue.

Poetry

It is now two and a half years since I completed my first compendium of poetry, a book that has sold about four copies worldwide. And while I have barely written any poetry since, I am thinking about what my next poetic project could be, and I have an idea: a chapbook. My book of poems comprises several sections, and I thought it might be cool to create chapbooks of each section, and sell them individually as art projects containing both word and visual. I have saved in a wishlist online some appropriate paper, and a heavy-duty stapler that could aid me in creating these chapbooks, and all it takes is putting some together. My wife maintains an area on consignment in a local craft shop, and perhaps I could add a few of these chapbooks to that area and see if they sell. I don’t know that they would, but it is an idea in the queue.

Reading

I start to sound like a broken record in this regard, but I find it difficult to read these days. I wish I could read, but every time I think about opening a book, it seems an insurmountable task. But, I have a book that I bought a while back, Patrick Stewart’s Making It So. I would like to read that book this summer. It used to be I could read twelve books every couple of weeks, but maybe I can manage one book by September. I don’t know if that is achievable, but that book is in the queue.

Photography

Lately I acquired some scenery material: driftwood, sand, rocks, etc. and I aspire to use this to craft photo worthy scenes. While I’ve yet to use it as such, the ideas are percolating in my head of photos I could take. I have a few difficulties to iron out, such as a lack of room, not wanting to build permanent dioramas for the photos, and what to do with the scenery media when I am done with it, but I can’t shake the images I see when I close my eyes and dream of what could be. The pictures shimmer in the queue.

Organization

My wife and I moved into this house just after Christmas Day in 2024, which means we’ve been here almost six months now. The house is just now starting to feel like a home, and as such, it needs a few things internally, that thankfully aren’t plumbing or maintenance related. No, I am speaking of decorating and organizing. I have made great strides in the craft room (what was supposed to be the master bedroom) in terms of both decor and optimizing storage, layout, and usability. But the living room, the kitchen, and even perhaps the bedroom could use some help.

The kitchen in particular has very little decor, and still bears the marks of being moved into hastily, with little organization, optimization, and isn’t terribly user friendly. It does the job, but it needs TLC. The bedroom we are only in for sleep and whatnot, so that is low on the priority list, but the living room is the third most used common area (after kitchen and craft room). It, too, needs a little thought and love. Decorating and organizing thoughts drift through the queue.

Clearly, I have plenty to do. It has helped to streamline my priorities just in writing them down. Before I had vague ideas, but now I have action points and even some hazy plans. Yeesh, that sounded too much like a few of the committees I was on for work this past year. Shudder. If I could accomplish even half of these queued tasks, though, I would feel like I had a great summer, and my environment would benefit, as would my creative expression which needs, um, expressing.

And also in the queue? R&R. I can report that I have been already availing myself of some of that, and with a trip to Boston planned for the end of July, I can even take some time to see another part of the world. Won’t that be fun?

Update: May 2025

Wednesday in north Texas is supposed to reach triple digit temperatures, on the Fahrenheit scale anyway, so I guess summer is about to make a bold entrance in 2025. I thought I would take advantage of the brief time before the heat arrives to take stock of where I stand as I head into the imminent summer.

Health

Tomorrow marks three weeks of my change to healthier eating. I am experiencing increased energy, decreased lethargy, and I am staying awake longer than I have before. Important numbers are down, and in general, I feel better. I relish the change, and while weight loss is not a goal, it’s happening anyway. I am able to wear a 2X shirt for the first time in many years, and have more room in my jeans than I used to. I enjoy purchasing new clothes from time to time, and now I may have an excuse in the near future to do so. That’s exciting!

Andor

Light spoilers follow for a TV show. Skip the next paragraph to avoid.

I continue to watch Star Wars: Andor and it continues to not be my jam. I understand completely what they are doing with the story and the horror of the Empire’s rule, I just don’t think that it is necessary to see in stark “reality”. A recent episode showed a brutal massacre, and it was very difficult to sit through. I prefer my Star Wars more lighthearted and adventurous than dark and depressing.

I started to build more with LEGO in the past weeks, having built one MOC (my own creation) out of an official set, with more custom building to follow. I even bought a few new shelf units to spread out my “on display” LEGO collection to provide more room to expand my MOC. I plan to build an entire street or two in a small Tatooine town, hopefully. I also bought a few Ultimate Collector Series sets (well, one was free due to reward points I’ve been saving over a few years!) that I can’t wait to build: the X-Wing Starfighter and the TIE Interceptor. They are updates of the first two ever UCS offerings that first appeared waaay back in 2000. Twenty-five years is a long time to wait to finally own the pair (though I did own, briefly, an interim UCS X-Wing that debuted in 2013, but I sold it not long after building, as was my habit back then).

Other making includes a diorama for my Star Wars action figures. A while back I bought miniature replica skulls of a rancor and a mudhorn, and I’ve finally got a few ideas of how to photograph them. I need to purchase a few materials to complete the dioramas, but once that is complete, I think I can break out my camera and finally snap a few photos. It will be a long time coming, but worth it. I also recently bought some new texture paint I can’t wait to play around with that might lead to even more creative dioramas and photos.

The past few weeks, or months, I remained busy with stuff around work and other pursuits, but I think I will finally start to dig into my hobbies with gusto. Especially with the summer coming up with less responsibility at work, I will have larger blocks of uninterrupted time. All that remains is to put down my phone and pick up my paintbrush or break out my bricks. That part sounds easy, but as most know in these futuristic times, putting down the phone is sometimes difficult.

Baseball

The baseball season must travel a bit before it reaches the dog days of summer, but things are heating up with the weather as the competition gets going. I love watching the Cleveland Guardians play, especially as they are a young team finding their way. Excitement abounds with each game as different players step up each game with a direct impact. Far from being a “one-man-show”, the Guardians showcase a true team effort. I’ve also been watching the Texas Rangers some, and the Boston Red Sox, as I always love seeing the always iconic Fenway.

Speaking of Fenway and the Red Sox and traveling: I am going to Fenway in-person this summer! Towards the end of July I am taking a trip to Boston to take my dad (who is a huge Red Sox fan) to finally experience all that baseball has to offer in one of the oldest baseball towns in America. This is going to be a really fun trip! We will also be able to visit the U.S.S. Nautilus, which is now a museum in Connecticut, but was once a key part of the US NAVY, aboard which my grandfather served for many years as an engineer. I very much look forward to seeing the first submarine he ever served on, and get a glimpse into what his journey under the sea might have been like all those years ago. Other highlights include meeting up with an old friend (possibly two), seeing some of my wife’s family I’ve yet to meet, and being a tourist. We still need to plan a few details, but I am getting more excited for the trip each day.

Challenges

I still can’t read. I feel sad about this, as reading has been a huge part of my life for a long time, but focus and motivation to read remains absent from me. I recently purchased Patrick Stewart’s memoir Making it So but have yet to crack the cover. I have other books I would love to re-read, or explore further. Maybe as my physical health, and as an extension my mental health, improves I will be able to try to read again. I did recently read through the audiobooks of the Lord of the Rings with my wife, a thoroughly enjoyable time that gave me new insights into the story that I want to dig into academically in the future, but again, finding the mental impetus to do so remains difficult.

An aside, of sorts, here: when I do have time, I don’t reach for a book. Part of it is an irrational feeling of not being allowed to. I feel as if I would be wasting the time spent reading, even though I know time spent reading is never wasted. I don’t know why this is, especially when I usually spend the time I would be reading doomscrolling on my phone or playing Scrabble instead. It might mean just taking the plunge, but that is a leap I’ve yet to make. If I am going to sit around anyway, I may as well be reading instead of scrolling social media.

I know the world, and my country, is much not good right now, but I cannot carry that burden myself. Yes, I am deeply concerned, scared, and angry about what my government is actively doing to so many innocent people, but I feel for me, right now, the best resistance is to deny the evil-doers the ability to darken my soul. The best resistance I can mount is to live a good, positive life. That is how I defeat, not with hate, but with love, and love starts with loving myself. I cannot pour from an empty vessel, but with a self full of love, I am able to love others and pour into their lives. That is how the way will be won.

All in all, I feel as if I am in a good place in many ways. I want to continue to build on the progress I have made thus far, and see where the future takes me. I have many pursuits on my horizon, and endeavors I would love to reach towards, and journeys to take. It is a wide open summer.

Reclamation Projects

Shiny and new has its place, but more than anything, a good project with recycled materials is something special. I love building things out of cardboard boxes, scraps of materials that I’ve scrounged, or spare parts. This is less about physical making, and more about psychological reclamation.

As a kid, I remember being obsessed with Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic. I loved Snoopy in particular, and his adventures with his little yellow fowl friend Woodstock. Of course the whole gang is charming: Charlie Brown’s hapless baseball team that can never seem to win; Schroeder avoiding Lucy; Linus with his blanket and philosophy; and all the rest. A while back, despite how much I loved Peanuts, my brother claimed them as his thing and I’ll admit that I let that rob my joy for the comic. Clearly a me problem, it nonetheless rubbed me the wrong way for too long.

Recently, I was in Half Price Books and found a volume of the Complete Peanuts from the 50’s, and was struck by how much I loved the strip. I bought it, and since then have been contemplating how to acquire the rest of the collection. I’ve been reading through a volume that includes ‘87-‘88 (my birth year) and have found many dailies that I have never read. More than individual comics, I have reclaimed my love of Snoopy and it is bringing me so much happiness.

In another vein, for my entire childhood, I built and played with LEGO. Pretty much every day, I was sorting, tweaking, or lost in imaginary worlds built out of the little plastic bricks. Twice in my adulthood I sold my entire collection on eBay. Once, it was at the memory of my ex-wife’s disdain for the hobby. The second time I felt like I needed the money. Both times I tried to make the best of it, but internally, I was very unhappy about the sales. I felt I was losing a part of myself.

In the past few years, I have started to rebuild my LEGO collection. I am doing it with a bit more intention this time, but the promise I made to myself when I started buying was to never sell my collection again. I am feeling the old joy I used to have, and getting back into the mental space of making my own creations. I am noticing some rust on my concentration and abilities, but it is coming back to me piece by piece.

In these ways, and others, I am my own reclamation project. I am taking bits of myself I have lost, and putting them back into my life in intentional ways. It wasn’t my brother or my ex-wife to really blame for my brokenness, it was me. I let myself crumble to other’s opinions, proclivities, or my own circumstances. But now it is time to reclaim things long gone, and add them to new hobbies, new loves, and assemble a new amalgamation of me.

I used to think, and say, that I didn’t have regrets, but now I realize that life isn’t about avoiding regret, that is inevitable, but life is about learning to let regret motivate me to something better. I regret losing my childhood LEGO, but I am motivated to curate a great collection that I can enjoy for years. I regret letting my brother’s love for Peanuts steal mine, but I, too, can enjoy Snoopy and the gang into the future. I am done living by others’ rules or opinions, and letting it steer my ship into shoals I never wanted to sail. Going forward, I want to set my own course towards sunrises I want to see.

Obsessions

I’ve written before of my appreciation for Adam Savage, YouTube personality and former Mythbuster. He loves to make things, and one of his (many) catchphrases is “Stay Obsessed!” which he inscribed in my copy of his book when I recently met him. For Adam, obsession is a way of life, and it means to inculcate yourself into every aspect of something you enjoy.

obsession, n. an idea or thought that continually preoccupies a person’s mind

When an idea takes hold of Adam, it is usually something that he wants to make. He most often crafts replicas of movie props (he made his living for a while making real ones), or really any esoteric thing that grabs his fancy. One of his current projects is replicating the St. Edward’s Crown. Adam saw a truly absurd object and thought “I must have one!” and set about making his own. Currently he is working on a 3D printed version. (A difference between Adam and I is that I would see that absurd object and wonder why anyone, British royalty notwithstanding, would want one.)

I am obsessed with Star Wars. I am also obsessed with J.R.R. Tolkien’s universe; with Star Trek; and with other worlds and flights of fancy. In the making vein, I am obsessed with photography. To support my photography habit, I am obsessed with action figures. I love to make dioramas for them to be posed upon, and to be photographed creatively therein. I enjoy the making of the dioramas, the painting and weathering, of seeing something emerge from simple materials into something that looks real at scale. I also quite enjoy Lego. In fact, my toy photography habit started with what I called the Lego Portraits, simple photos of my minifigures. I got more elaborate at the setups, taking them into the “real” world, or building large Lego dioramas to photograph.

Many things have happened in life that has tempered my creative output: depression, work, obligations, and unfortunate circumstances have all conspired to curtail what I put out into the world. My current living arrangement is one of the most recent. I am constrained in my diorama making ability by not being able to set up a workshop, either for action figures or for Lego. I quite simply do not have the space. But I remain obsessed by the idea. I can’t help it. It has preoccupied my mind.

I bought a new camera, new action figures (though no new Lego – yet!), and continue to dream. Adam takes each new build, no matter what stage of completion it is in, home to wonder at it, consider it, and to deepen his obsession. Often by viewing it intently, some new avenue of creation or idea of how to proceed occurs to him and he is off to his shop to continue making. I have the three new action figures I purchased on my dresser where I can see them frequently and I continually wonder how I might photograph them.

I am trying to live up to Adam’s exhortation. “Stay obsessed!” he says to me, challenging me to not give up, to not surrender to what surrounds and what threatens to derail my creative process.

Even now, I am considering ideas of how I might continue to create, constrained as I am. Part of the trouble is that I don’t know how long this set of constraints might last, but really, there is always something in the way, if I’m honest. That depression, for example, which I’ve also written much about, never quite seems to go away.

At the end of the day, these are all so much the smoke of excuses. Adam didn’t always have the nice workshop he has today. He variously created in an apartment he shared (he admits he was a terrible roommate!), a warehouse, a college dorm room, a basement, a borrowed shop, and other places. What matters is that he never allowed himself to be defined by what he couldn’t do. Another mentor of mine, once upon a long ago, had a saying, “Restrictions breed creativity.”

I’m certainly restricted now, in physical making space, in time, in materials, in other things, but I can still create. I can still allow my obsession to fuel me, to spark, and to ignite that which I love: making things. Making will look different but that is ok. Even if it remained the same, I am afraid it would stagnate like a ditchwater pond on a hot day. Change and constraints work together to keep things new and fresh, thrust forward by obsession.

The question then becomes: what will I create? Us creative types are always being asked where our ideas come from, as if we have a compendium of genius that we keep, able to draw from at any time. If so, I haven’t got a key to that particular Pandora’s box. Adam Savage seems to have an unending supply of fanciful ideas from which to make each new thing, but he has also intimated that sometimes he simply gets struck by something that turns into his next obsession. Even he doesn’t always know what to do next. Another of Adam’s sayings is to “follow the process, not the plan” which means more to go with the flow than to rigidly work through a blueprint.

Camera. Action figure. Setting…setting…hmm. Almost there. I need to stay obsessed with the idea of a toy photograph, and see where the process takes me. I’ll just stretch out here, turn on some tunes, and get to work letting inspiration strike.

Stay obsessed.

The Success of Failure

I am a fan of Adam Savage. Folks my age will know him as the erstwhile Mythbuster, a man who egregiously blew sh*t up and rigorously tested urban legends, myths, historical fables, and internet viral videos (among other things) on the Discovery Channel. Today he runs a YouTube channel called Tested. Adam is a strong proponent of the Maker Movement. What is making? In his words: “making is any time you reach out with your point of view and make something from nothing” and it could be computer code, a blog post, a deck chair, an omelet, a crochet cactus – anything!

Another Adam-ism is that “failure is always an option!” One must fail many times on journey of success. Note: I didn’t say road, because making is rarely that straightforward, that well-trodden, that…obvious. Making is more of a journey, in that the trip is more important (sometimes) than the destination, or the end result. I have come to believe that what I learn while making is more valuable to me than the object I end up with as a result of my making.

My most recent foray into making was in customizing a Star Wars action figure. This action figure is a stock re-creation of a character from one of Lucasfilm’s TV shows. I wanted to make it a similar character, but not the one everyone knows. I began with a simple paint job. A little acrylic paint here and there to change the tone and color of the figure. I then added some Rub’N’Buff, a wax product that lends a metallic sheen to things. Finally I wanted to “weather” the figure, that is, add a patina of dirt and grime to make the figure seem like it came from a lived-in universe and not fresh from a factory somewhere. And there is where I failed.

I failed by not sealing my paint job. I should have, but I don’t quite know how as that isn’t knowledge I have yet added to my mental memory banks. Usually, it isn’t a problem (I hadn’t learned how much of a problem it could be until this episode!). This Failure led to a succession of failures. First, the medium I use for weathering is a pigmented water-based wash meant for miniature figures, such as for gaming or other uses. It is a little sticky, though, and there-in lay the trouble. With an unprotected paint job, the wash first stuck to my plastic gloves, and then to the paint. I started, as I merely handled the figure in between wash coats, to pull off bits of the paint I had so carefully laid down in the first place. Then, this pulled up paint, now stuck to my gloves and re-wetted ever so slightly, started to be re-applied to places it shouldn’t have been whenever I touched the figure. I figured this out too late.

After that, I tried to cover my mistakes with more Rub’N’Buff, but that led to patches of metallic silver or black which didn’t approximate the look I was going for: subtle glints of metallic color. Finally, the wash didn’t really show up anyway as much as I wanted it to due to the darker color of the figure, so it ended up not adding much variation. The end result is a patchy, muddy, overly-dark re-colored figure. I failed to achieve my goal!

Overall, this is one more step in the journey towards a great looking custom Star Wars action figure. I may have failed this iteration, but I have gained a lot by the exercise. First, I need to find a way to seal my figures once painted. Second, I need to adjust my levels of Rub’N’Buff. A little really does go a long way. Third, I may need a new weathering media, or maybe if sealed, the washes I have will work fine. I don’t know yet. I need to take a few more steps, and learn thereby.

Adam, I believe, would applaud my efforts. He is fond of saying that workshops should adhere all the iterative failures to the wall, not to shame, but to show the long, slow progression of progress from beginning to intermediate to master of the craft; to show that each failure is a step in the right direction; to spur on the maker towards more making. I don’t quite have the wall or shelf space, but I’ve rarely thrown a mistake away. I have a bin of almost-there figures that I take out once in a while and marvel at how far I’ve come. Maybe someday I will take what I have learned and improve on them and make them something more than they are, or maybe I will display them someday when I do have room and see where I’ve come from.

Tested has a merch store. Part of their offerings for sale that they created and made available some time ago are “de-merit” badges. These are patterned off the scout badges one can earn as a girl or boy scout, but instead of showing things achieved as a merit badge, these celebrate the wrong turns, the failures, the mistakes made along the way. There is one for touching wet paint, for letting out the mysterious blue smoke that powers electronics, for plugging too many things into one outlet, for measuring once resulting in cutting twice, and many more. For one thing, failures along the journey are as plentiful as they are varied, but for another, they are mile-markers, sign posts to show just how far a maker has come.

Adam and Tested occasionally give gifts to their YouTube Patrons, a little “thank you for the support” and in December they sent out three random de-merit badges. I received mine. I hadn’t yet made a purchase of them for myself, and was curious to see how I felt by having some in my possession. I surprised myself by delighting in them! These three were de-merit badges I had already earned: Cut Oneself, Accidentally Glued Fingers Together, and Lost Screw. I knew immediately that I had to add a few more badges I had also earned. (I ordered six more, and they should be arriving soon. I have been hard at work failing!) Now I need a way to proudly display them. Still working on that.

I am ever so thankful to Adam Savage for his guidance. I tend towards perfectionism, and push myself hard to get it right on the first go around. That is almost never possible! So with a little patience and self-love and grace, I can learn to succeed at failing and eventually reach a destination of making what I set out to make, though I don’t think I will ever stop losing screws, or accidentally gluing my fingers together, or other epic fails along the way!

The Right Tool

I’ve been working on several projects lately. I recently wrote about the book I am writing in conjunction with my wife, but I have others in process. I love to make things in the physical world, not just the literary one, and my dad loves model trains. Together he and I are working to build a grand train display in his hobby room. My dad is coming up with the layout and some ideas, and I will be doing most of the building when it comes to scenery, greenery, and other such things.

The first step is to build trestles. My dad has an HO (a larger scale, for the uninitiated) train that he wants to be on a square oval in the middle of his train table. In, around, and underneath that train track he wants to weave his N gauge (a smaller scale) train tracks. To do that, the HO needs to be elevated. Plastic risers such as they sell in the mass market for elevating train tracks are not tall enough, so it fell to me to build new ones.

I went to my local hobby store, and perused the shelves for what I could use to construct sturdy, yet lightweight, trestles. I found some balsa wood rods that were a quarter inch square and thirty-six inches long. Perfect! I found some reference pictures online that could be close to what I wanted to build, and then it was figure-it-out time! I played around with some sizing and how to build a lattice, but then came the cutting.

I don’t have many blades at my disposal other than a few pocket knives, but I do have an Exacto blade. I figured the balsa wood was soft enough that I could cut through it with that. So that’s what I did. Man, was that a bad idea! It took forever, didn’t always give me good cuts, and in the end, gave me sore fingers and a massive blister on my thumb where I pressed down on the Exacto handle. Not fun.

Eventually, I finished the trestles (with some Vallejo sepia wash they even looked like railroad ties and not balsa wood) and delivered them to my dad’s hobby room. Unfortunately, what we thought we needed was not enough. The track required a bit more support than we initially figured, meaning we had to move the trestles closer together than originally planned. That meant I was back in fabrication mode. My blister had finally healed, and I didn’t want a repeat performance from my thumb. Enter the Home Depot.

Home Depot sits across from the hobby store in the next town over, and after purchasing enough balsa wood rods to finish the project, I thought to myself that I would at least see if Home Depot had something I could use to cut them to make the job easier. I took a look at the hand saws, chisels, box cutters, and other blades and eventually found something I thought might serve my purpose: a small 8″ hacksaw with a small, many-toothed blade. So I bought it.

Coming home I tried it out on a scrap of balsa wood that I had left over from my first foray into trestle making, and it worked perfectly! The blade was small enough to cut the quarter inch rod, and sharp enough to give me almost the perfect cut! Wow, I wished I had thought to buy that at the beginning! The right tool for the job really does make the job that much easier. And now I have a small saw for other building projects I undertake in the future.

I quickly cut up the balsa wood I had purchased to make the rest of the trestles, and of course it took me an hour instead of half the day to chop it up into the lengths I needed. Now all that is left is assembly and paint, and then I should be done making trestles. After that comes securing them in place, placing the HO track on top, and, well, the project continues from there. N gauge track underneath, planning the scenery, and taking it further. This won’t be a quick project, but it has already been fun. I have had the opportunity to grow my fabrication skills and later I will be able to flex my creative muscles as well. I can’t wait!

And making things is a great diversion from writing, which I had been doing fairly non-stop until my dad and I embarked on the Great Train Project. Now I get to take a break from stringing words together and can cut, glue, and paint (usually in that order). And once I’ve come to a finishing point in the fabrication, I can get back to writing. It allows me the chance to work different processes, and not get burned out in doing only one thing all the time.

Other projects are also in the works for me, such as photography, organizing, action figure customization, and the list goes on. I might need to start scheduling my time to get to it all! We will see. For now, it’s “All aboard!” in finishing the train trestles, which I think I may do after lunch.