A recent small project, a Shaker candle box

It’s nice to have a small project in the works once in a while. Building a house, on the extreme end of the spectrum, is a dizzying task of organization, lining up materials and labor, and of course the construction itself. It’s a truly heroic effort to bring a house to completion. Over the past couple of years, I’ve found woodworking to be a nice side pursuit, because I get some of the same satisfaction and skill building that I do from building homes, but the scale is obviously so much smaller and so much more manageable.

Back in college, I used to do a fair amount of video production and short film-making. There’s a lot of work that goes into being able to produce an intelligible and interesting short film. It’s not totally unlike building a house in some ways — organization and looking three or four steps ahead is really important. You have to compile seemingly disparate elements into a single refined product that can hold itself together. On the other hand, I also like photography, which is like a kind of instant gratification when compared to making films and videos. All it takes is a snap of the shutter, and you’ve made something.

This recent candle box I made is like woodworking instant gratification. It’s a very small project, but highly satisfying to work on and complete, and it still gives me a chance to practice my skills.

Really, I think there’s a lot of benefit to doing small projects. There is/was a stretch of time that I’ve been sunk in pretty massive projects, and that can get overwhelming at times. Building Strawtron with April was an incredible life experience, yet I think back and am astonished that it all worked and came together the way that it did. It’s kind of crazy that that house exists now.

Making small projects is a great way to keep engaged with your creative self, without a lot of the at-times enormous responsibility of a bigger project. The stakes are lower, but that doesn’t mean the project is any less important or valuable… it just frees you up to really enjoy yourself and the process of creativity.

Yea. I like that.