Find your craft & become a craftsman
idle time is not fulfilling, your craft is.
If you could name a type of person who can be looked up to by almost anyone, what type of person would come to mind?
For me, it’s someone who gets lost in creating things, someone, who can lose track of time working on their craft.
For me, it’s the craftsman (or craftswoman). This is someone I can look up to always, for they have found something they love that fulfills them so much that all else fades away in the background when they are involved with their craft.
Today, we’re going to look even more into craftsmanship, how you can find your craft, & why you should.
Creating things & why your free time is not fulfilling
The noble pursuit of creating things may also be called “craftsmanship”. From a woodworker to a writer on the internet, there is a deep sense of fulfillment to be had while one is focused on their own crafts.
This is because having a goal and having a depth of focus in one’s life ultimately makes it a lot better, even more so than if a crafter (you) were to have ample free time, being involved in a craft would bring your life more happiness.
On this topic is a quote from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mentioned in his book: Flow.
“Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.”
The main point is here: Time spent on a craft or occupation is much more fulfilling because it is easier to find fulfillment in doing hard things than doing nothing.
How do you find your craft?
If there was one absolute way to find your craft, I don’t know of it. The truth is there are likely an infinite number of ways to discover your specific craft by exploring what comes naturally curious to you.
On the other side of the same craftsmanship coin, you will also find that even the things you find more or less mundane can be turned into a craft as well: with you as the core craftsman.
So, you have two options here, or possible pathways rather
The first is the scenario in that you want to find what comes most curious to you. You search by trying new things & exploring what comes to your mind as interesting. Eventually, you end up crafting something through this avenue, & at some point, you get lost in the craft. For some this is writing, for others, this is smithing, for your grandma it may be crochet, you may find more than 1 craft too. The most fulfilling crafts however are never ending journeys, journeys where the entire point is the act of crafting themselves because there never was an end to this endevoir for your mind to set itself on in the first place.
The second scenario is that you have something you do that you may not always enjoy, but you find it extremely fulfilling regardless. This is a more common pathway of the 21st century when there are much more dynamics to living a full life than just having food on the table or a roof over one’s head. This scenario is found in more so “darkness” in the sense that it’s not a go-lucky fun search party for one’s passion or interests, but a revelation of fulfillment in one’s occupation or paid craft, one that somehow for whatever reason reveals itself as a craft to get lost in over time, maybe even after years of being involved. Perhaps a craftsman spends their whole life in the process of crafting only to retire & realize where so much of their fulfillment came from.
This second scenario is much less “just do this” than the first, but the truth is if I can tell you exactly how to do something, then its probably not worth your full attention. The idea here on finding your craft is that you don’t need to find something that sets a fire in you 24/7 because no one has a fire in them 24/7, some people have just devoted themselves to the craft regardless, because they know where it will lead their sense of fulfillment & actual fulfillment.
Why should you find your craft?
Why should you find your craft?
Hey! Im asking you, why? Do you have any idea?
Chances are you’re brain is stumped in some way when trying to answer this question, I know I’m the one who brought you here to tell you about the subject of craftsmanship, but I’d like to end this wall of text with something different.
You answering your own internal dialogue. Most of us avoid the thoughts that scramble our brain all day long, distraction after distraction, but if you sit for 5 minutes and think about 1 question, you may be surprised by the answers you find.
Aside from being more fulfilled, finding your craft can enable you to have a go at making your “lifes work”, something that you are constantly progressing at, or working on. Again, this is massive for our fulfillment in life, & fulfillment comes with a very large relative measure to happiness… buttttt you know what else you being involved in your craft brings?
It brings people from all over the planet together and sparks them to craft things too. Your crafts have a massive butterfly effect to change those around you and with the power of the internet, the entire global population. I know you’ve looked up to someone who spends endless hours on their craft before, & by looked up i don’t mean just to the end result, but to the process behind the result especially.
You are a creator & a craftsman too, & if you’re just realizing it now: then you better get on with it.
Too Long Didnt Read
Skipping this section today, go read the above :)
Thank you so much for reading, if you enjoyed then how about you go and craft something ;)
your friend in his mom’s basement,
jack ♠️