Woodworking takes time, and that is good for me.

Something I have been thinking about is the nature of time for hobbies and activities. Hobbies that involve computers as a major aspect of it have the distinct trait that computers are very fast, and the hobby is marked by that. Computer-based music-making is mostly a question of tweaking inputs, pressing play to see if you like the result, and then tweaking some more. The feedback loop is very fast, it’s mostly the time to evaluate if you like the result, and the adjustment of parameters in a direction you like more. This is excellent for trying things out.

Woodworking is not like this. You can have an idea for what you want to change, and then the implementation of that change still takes a lot of time and effort, during which you may want to reconsider, adjust things on the fly or stop halfway. It is marked profoundly by being based on interaction with a physical object. Cooking is also like this, but I feel it less strongly. Maybe because cooking very often has the primary purpose of feeding myself and others, not artistic or artisinal expression. That happens sometimes, but much rarer than the cooking-for-eating case. However, I don’t have necessity-driven woodworking, not really. If I need a piece of woodworking, a container or a piece of furniture, it is probably better and faster to simply buy it from some place than it is for me to buckle down and make it then and there.

This time, this delay, in something that I do purely for artistic expression and joy of working with my hands, is valuable and good for me, in my opinion. It forces me to slow down, it forces me to spend time just executing, without directly thinking about the next thing that will follow it. Many steps in building a small thing from wood are conceptually extremely simple, but simply take time in execution. The coating/varnishing/finishing step on top are an exercise in patience as well. Classic wood finishes like linseed oil or tung oil take three weeks to cure properly.¹

This execution time is boring, in the most classical sense. Many recreational woodworkers fill it with podcasts or audio books or whatever, and I do that sometimes, but sometimes, I enjoy just letting my hands be busy while my head roams around. In the end, I have a thing that is rather durable, and very solid of an object, and my head got to roam idly. It’s nice, and I should do more of it. You should consider trying it, if you don’t have something like this.