#WhyIMake: The short simple answer...desperation. I'm not short. I'm not simple. I'd like to tell you a story. Relax and get comfortable.

'Yesterday's World'

I didn't make things for most of my life. Had no interest in it. I had a career and I chased the dream. I did what marketing and society said I should do. Got up, went to work, and turned wrenches. I repaired. Helicopters. I got good at it. I was on top of my game. I worked hard. I got the opportunity to come to Alaska. I met the girl and bought the big house. I did what marketing and society told me I was supposed to do.

Sweet Summer Sugar Trunk

It all came crashing down a few years back. After 30 years in the industry my job went away. For the ten years previous I had tried and tried to figure out a way to change careers. Couldn't do it. I couldn't afford to start on the bottom rung of the ladder once again. I was too old and too entrenched in my ways. Now, due to a very down economy, I suddenly found myself (gasp) unemployable. Seems nobody wanted me. All of a sudden I was too old. After wishing for a decade to be able to do something else, that wish had just been forced on me. I had no idea what to do to make ends meet.

Reflections Past

If you've been on this planet a while like me, you may remember an old sitcom called 'Dharma and Greg'. Free spirited hippy chick meets stuffy, arrogant, career guy. That would be my wife and I. We have joked about it in the past. I had no idea that it was so much more than a joke.

My wife, teacher, and best friend

My hippy chick wife has a love of life, art, helpings others, and antiques. The material world and acquiring great wealth isn't important to her. Making the world a little better place is.

Death of a Butterfly

She loves the beauty of handcrafted things. She has a vast appreciation for those that think outside the box. She has a love for taking whatever she can find and turning it into a work of beauty. To her this is life. Greg thought Dharma was nuts. You can't do this and I''m not interested in helping you. I made her miserable. I wasn't interested in her world, she was supposed to conform to mine. Thats what a wife does, right? Wrong, but I'll get to that.

Eternal Patriot

About this time I learned I was autistic. I am high functioning but live very much in the spectrum. I live with all the quirks and oddities. I had always been an odd duck. I knew a lot of people but had very few friends. I always did things different than everyone else. During my career, especially in my younger years I didn't read the manuals well. Don't get me wrong, I have always loved to read but reading instructions and following them was difficult. I worked and learned from the pictures. Diagrams were my friend. Nobody knew I did this. I thought everybody worked this way. I could take a helicopter apart down to the fuselage, do my inspections and repair work, then reassemble it just like the pictures showed. By using the pictures and finally learning how to make sense of the manuals I became very good at my chosen career. That was now in the past.

Simple Yet Elegant

It was my wife that taught me about autism. She has experience in this area. She raised an autistic son. She saw it in me the first time we met. I went overboard, learning about and telling everyone I was autistic. I annoyed people with it. I alienated everyone around me and I was miserable. If you haven't noticed yet, when I write I have a tendency to go on tangents. Back to my story of Why I Make.

Raven From The Land Down Under

 

Farewell and the Golden Ring

We managed to sell our home before we lost it. We downsized. We went camping for the summer as nobody would rent to us but thats another story. We finally got a roof over our heads again but there was still no job. We had to make money somehow. Mistake after mistake and blunder upon blunder had been the norm for me. We had always done things my way or not at all. I'm still not sure why she stayed with me. Anyway, none of my ideas or concepts worked. I finally got it to register in my narrow mind to follow her lead. I finally listened to her, albeit kicking and screaming, and we created. We made. Farewell and the Golden Ring was born. If you scroll way back in my blog, you can find him!

The Big Top

Do you remember the Wonder Horse?

We went to the dump for our materials. We pulled old broken things out of the trash bins. I was still arrogant. I did it and took her, but I didn't like it. My actions words and body language told her so. If you haven't figured it out yet, I wasn't a nice person. We made a lot of things that year. Most of it sold. We sold enough things to keep our bills payed that year. 

The World According to Kitty

I learned about glue guns, sequins, and glitter. YES, THERE WILL BE GLITTER! I must give credit for that line to my wife. The world is just a little bit better with glitter. I learned about colors and style and (almost) how to arrange things in a visually pleasing way that others found pleasant or beautiful. What can I say, I'm still a guy and I'm still autistic. My sense of style and taste show that very well!

Holiday Bazaar 2016

We sold a lot of stuff that first year. I finally was beginning to learn how to work well with others. It was a long road and I'm still learning but I finally began to learn how to connect with and appreciate my wife. I created and learned but I was still arrogant. I made snide remarks. I belittled and berated. I was in the beginning stages of a transformation but I was still me.

Mourning After The Rain...A Tribute To Prince

It was around this time my wife started to get sick. Cancer plus all of her old injuries beginning to haunt her. My wife had suffered many injuries back in the 90's. She actually died once. She had to be put back together and relearn everything. She's lived in pain every day of her life since that fateful day. That's for another time.

Pascale...

For A Friend

 Her involvement in our projects became less physical and more ideas and knowledge. I was doing more of the work and picking her brain. That's one of the ways I learn, by asking questions to the point of exhausting people. I've always been that way. I have exhausted a lot of people over the course of my lifetime. I exhausted my wife. 

Marry The Moon

 Something was starting to take hold in me. It was a very slow and painful process but I began to enjoy making things. My color coordination was getting a bit better. I was learning to see the value in old things that others had cast off. I began to think in ways of “What can I do with this?” My brain, after all those decades of following the rules was learning to think outside the box. It was all because of Dharma's extreme patience with me.

Haunting

My wife is still sick. She can no longer make. I make for her. Now, I do it willingly. Now, I do it because I love her vision of beauty. Now, I make because it gives me a sense of pride and improves my self-esteem which had been extremely low for my entire life.

We can't give this lovely tray away...at least these rhinestones aren't in the bottom of the ocean

Things are still tough. My wife won't be around much longer. I am soon to lose the best friend I have ever had. Times are still hard. The economy is bad. Not many people buy things anymore unless they can click a mouse and have it delivered from the big online box stores. Again, the money isn't there. I still keep trying...making things and marketing and learning social media and writing and taking pictures and trying to scrounge a buck any way I can. 

Yeah, I broke it.

Because I make, I've learned much in just a few short years. I'm a better person. I'm finally okay with my autistic self. It took me getting to this point to finally realize just how much my wife means to me.

Deer in the Headlight

Get it???

I do make out of desperation, or at least I did. Now, I make for the love of beauty. Now, I make because I finally understand. Now, I make for my wife. If it weren't for her, I would be lost. Now, I make because it makes me a better person.

Removed from a dumpster as a pile of junk...The gentleman loved it!

Now, I make because making is life. 

Thank you for taking the time to read.  Enjoy something from nothing!

 

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