From my earliest youth, as far back as I can remember, I knew that whatever pleased my hand would be done right.
Aunts and grandmothers used to say, "You have golden hands," and my childhood friend, Misa, told me once: "You and I are so resourceful, that we can make and fix anything we can reach with our hands."
He was right.
Having dexterous craft hands is worth everyone, especially a man, but it can create pressure, because when everyone around you knows you are capable, they often ask you for help.
And like good guys, we often agreed to help others, selflessly spending our time and thus expanding the scope of activities that we could do independently.
And it was like that, until we started doing the jobs we were trained for.
At that moment, we could not give our craft knowledge to others, and what we know how to make with our hands became our hobby.
I was almost at the cottage and in the display case I found mock-ups of wooden tables, which my brother and I made in the market education classes, in the fifth grade of elementary school (at the age of 11).
From these two pictures (I glued the veneer, precisely processed the edges of the board and varnished it), you can clearly conclude which one was made by me, who is a bit of a perfectionist...
And so, the years passed and I mostly did crafts for my own needs that I mastered, enjoying those activities.
"How can you be satisfied, when you get dirty, work hard and get tired", my partner asked me quite a few times.
"I can, because I like to see the finished product of my work at the end of my work, what I managed to make independently".
And not to mention the quality of the execution, because when you do something for yourself, you will do it to the best of your ability.
And so I installed the facade on the complete house at the cottage, in the apartment I independently designed and built the built-in closet and kitchen, made furniture, painted, installed the shower cabin and toilet bowl, changed valves, installed cables and sockets...
Everything I could do on my own, I did it as a hobby in my spare time.
As my Hive friend @Ph1102 commented the other day, given that it's hard to find a quality and freelance craftsman when you need him, he is and will do all future work independently.
Same as me.
The only problem is that I am a perfectionist.
When I didn't manage to do something on my own, but hired masters, I was a hell of a supervisor.
I sent them back to redo some of the works to get what I envisioned.
And I'm like that when I do something for myself as a hobby. It has to be close to perfection.
And so I often screw myself up.
I don't believe I mentioned somewhere that I promised to my neighbor that I would fix the cracks in her terrace?
Due to the subsidence of the earth, cracks appeared on the wall a few years ago, which another master filled with some glue. But after a certain time, that glue fell apart and the cracks appeared again.
Thinking of doing the same, I bought a tube of special glue. When I approached this morning and saw the cracks, I realized that the glue was not enough.
A perfectionist, of course he will try to make it as good and as durable as possible.
I bought mesh and construction glue and started with my hobby tool (which did the job maybe as well as a professional craftsman's tool) to start the work - filling the cracks and gluing the mesh over them.
However, when I started to remove the layers of glue and paint, pieces of the wall started to fall off. The area that opened up was very large.
So, I'm not going to finish this in one morning.
I went to the store, bought an impregnation material, coated the entire cleaned area and packed the tools to continue the work tomorrow.
When I walked into the house, the first question was, "Are you done yet?"
"For today I am, tomorrow to continue".
Now I'm lying in bed, typing these lines about my hobby "What I know how to make with my hands" and I'm already thinking, how I got involved by agreeing to do this.
The reason is, I think that even tomorrow will not be enough to bring the work to an end, so I will deal with this next weekend as well.
But it's not difficult for me, because when I'm done, it will be very nice and well done, actually like everything in my life that I've made with my hands, either for work needs (IT industry) or as a hobby (crafts).
Since these are my weekend activities, here they are in #weekend-experiences, with a topic in #weekend-engagement, about my hobby.
I wish you a nice weekend!
Rest well, all of you who do not have this kind of work as a hobby 😀
And the rest of you, who are like me, enjoy what you have achieved.
