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Saving the Good Stuff<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There comes a point when you realize you’ve been saving the good stuff for a version of yourself who never arrives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The nice notebook for a version of you who has words worthy of marring its pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The beautiful fabric you aren’t “good enough” to cut yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The good dishes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n The expensive art supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The life you’ll begin once you finally feel ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve done enough waiting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For years I kept trying to find work that fit the way my mind works. Work I could be proud of. Work that didn’t leave me lying awake at night dreading the next morning, or feeling as though I was participating in things that went against my values. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Every job seemed to ask me to become a little less myself in exchange for a paycheck. And they all seemed to have me helping someone who already had plenty of money to have even more while I struggled to stay exhausted and broke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually I realized I was asking the wrong question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not, What job can I get?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n But, What job can I build?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a fantasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a shortcut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A real job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One where I spend my days writing, making things, growing things, teaching what I know, and sharing whatever I discover along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A job that lets me sleep at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe that’s why I find myself thinking about the old trades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once upon a time, knowing a trade was enough to earn a living. If you knew how to make shoes, you became a cobbler. If you could alter clothing, you became a tailor. If you built furniture, you were a cabinetmaker. There were tinsmiths, coopers, wheelwrights, milliners, watchmakers, bookbinders, basket weavers. Ordinary people who knew how to do one thing well enough that their communities needed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mass production changed that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It made life easier in countless ways. It gave us abundance our great-grandparents could hardly have imagined. But it also quietly changed our relationship with work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When a pair of shoes became cheaper to replace than to repair, we stopped needing cobblers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When shirts became inexpensive enough to throw away, we stopped needing tailors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flat-packed furniture replaced many cabinetmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Little by little, many of the old trades stopped being practical ways to make a living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My grandfather came home from the Army, and it never even crossed his mind to work for someone else. He knew how to build something people needed, so he built a business around it. That was simply what you did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped believing we could do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We learned to write r\u00e9sum\u00e9s instead of apprenticeships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To look for openings instead of opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To wait for someone else to decide whether what we knew had value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I wonder if we’re standing at another turning point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the first time in generations, one person can write a book, teach a class, make beautiful things, share photographs, record ideas, and find the people who care about them without asking anyone’s permission to open the doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not everyone wants that life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Persnickety Hills is my attempt to build it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This isn’t just a website. It’s the workshop, the library, the garden, the classroom, and the front porch of a job I’m creating with my own hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe that’s why I finally cut into the good fabric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why I finally wrote in the good notebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because I realized something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The version of me I’d been waiting for was never going to arrive first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She only ever had one chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She had to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saving the Good Stuff There comes a point when you realize you’ve been saving the good stuff for a version of yourself who never arrives. The nice notebook for a version of you who has words worthy of marring its pages. The beautiful fabric you aren’t “good enough” to cut yet. The good dishes, The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reflections"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134,"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions\/134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warpedweftedandwild.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}