The first thing I ever built was a cedar chest. I slapped it together from old fence boards in my grandfather’s dimly lit garage, got hands full of splinters, and couldn’t have been more proud of myself.  I was 19 and needed a tactile pastime to distract me from my angsty thoughts so I started woodworking. I was innocent in my desire to build and this innocence gave me the freedom to try anything. 

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For a while this small, private adventure was enough. I built things that interested me, and told no one but my grandfather and my housemates. At the time I was living with two close friends, and they wouldn’t let me sit idle with woodworking. They asked me what it was I truly wanted, and challenged me to get curious about the talents and desires that dwelled in my heart. 

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These were questions I could’t have answered before woodworking. But having a craft for my hands also gave me a language for my heart. When I looked at my projects I saw a new expression of myself. I found parallels between my heart and the piece of wood I was working with. I would cut and sand a hunk of oak and watch it transform into something new. I couldn’t stop wondering what similar change was happening in me.

    

After that first chest, I stepped into a previously unknown dialogue about beauty. We interact with all kind of beauty daily, and more often than not we play the easy part of consumer. I wanted to create things more than I consumed them. I wanted to be transformed by a thing’s beauty without needing to possess it. 

    

The more I created, the more curious I seemed to become. I was hungry for more, and had no idea that I was at the beginning of something grand and totally unexpected. 

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That something grand was waiting for me in Southern Oregon, and first appeared as a friend’s commission for a dining room table. I approached this project with the same sloppy enthusiasm I had always used, but somewhere in the making my passion for woodworking changed. The finished table was the most honest thing I had ever created. Every crooked corner and rough patch was absolutely true to who I was. The process of creating that table was vulnerable and real. It felt like falling in love. I knew that I could build like this for the rest of my life. 

 

Soon after, I started to create a business, which proved to be far more difficult and terrifying that I expected. Creating a brand meant putting a piece of myself in front of a community and letting them judge it as they saw fit. I was unsure if I had anything truly valuable to offer. But every time my fear asks “What if it doesn’t work?” I realize the real confrontation isn’t with fear of failure, but with what I’m actually capable of if I try.  

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The more I create, the more I realize that it is about so much more than straight cuts and glass smooth finishes. Woodworking is about who I am, how I see the world, and a product of what happens when I choose to show up fully in every moment of my life.