The microwave life

Slow tedious craftsmanship and hard work has seemed to come to an end. Today, we see to have evolved to a sort of microwave living. Social media has pushed the success of so many, summed up in less than 500 words as though anyone can fall upon success, as if it was something that chance and being in the right place is all that is required.

Downloads are for computers, not for humans

At least not yet that is. I’m not Neo from The Matrix. I can’t suddenly know Kung Fu.  As cool as it would be, that’s cheating. To become a master at anything, it takes time and practice.Neo has just downloaded kung fu to his brain It also requires patience. I’m not good at being patient. Owning an e-commerce store, I know that I can create a web-page and upload it to the web in less than an hour. YouTube videos can go viral creating a superstar of almost anyone overnight. Don’t even get me started on the lottery. Too much, too fast is not good for anyone as Hollywood and fame has a long trail of ruined lives that have paved Hollywood Blvd.

Building something with your hands

I used to be a general contractor. I restored homes which sometimes took years to complete. I enjoyed seeing the progress of each day, room by room. In the end, it brought a very satisfying feeling seeing what I had done, but that was years ago. Now that I have been in the eCommerce world for fifteen plus years, my patience has waned. I seem to enjoy writing a check for others to do the work I once did. I’ll admit that I am older and my body doesn’t recover as quickly as it once did, but I want things done instantly. This microwave life that I have created has lost the satisfaction that building something with my hands had once brought. It has also removed the problem solving that goes into building something as well.

Ed and Rowena Waghorn from Herefordshire

Ed wanted to build a home from scratch, using his own designs and available materials for $100,000. It has taken him and his family over 15 years in the process. They have lived off of the land while building it and the life that they created while building, has been to focus on the journey.

Ed and Rowena's handcrafted home
Grand Designs

As I watched this episode on the Netflix series called Grand Designs,  at first I said to myself, “Jeez, he makes everything by hand. Why not just go out and buy a metal hinge?” Instead, he carves them out of scrap wood from trees that he felled on his own property. He painstakingly will spend days putting detail into items that you and I would simply have overlooked.  I used to have more patience to attempt something on a much smaller scale, but not anymore. I blame myself, but I also blame allowing technology too easily to replace tasks that I once enjoyed doing the analog way. They say that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Today, maybe it wouldn’t be built at all because we just don’t have the time nor the craftsmanship that it would now require.

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”     ― Theodore Roosevelt

Excuse me, for now I am going to go to my garage to build something, anything. I don’t care. I want to get my hands dirty. I want to see what I can create once again, and I don’t care how long it takes me!

7 thoughts on “The microwave life”

  1. I wish I were handsy too. Those are great skills to have building and creating items as they will always be income sources in lean times.

  2. I truly think that getting your “hands dirty ” can be very therapeutic. I don’t have building skills but I love working with my hands, specially in my garden!

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