I was thinking yesterday about how my skills don’t really translate into a world without computers. The end result of my work is a customer that doesn’t need me. That’s it. I don’t have a product that I can point to and say “I made that.”

Recently, a web page that I help run had some art contests. I entered all four: photoshopping an image, photography, poetry and multimedia art (painting, sculpture, woodwork, etc).

I haven’t been this excited in a long time. Walking around with a camera looking for some photographs to take was a great experience. Everything around me was a potential photograph, and I studied everything with an intensity that was almost scary.

The poetry writing was so much fun. I read a lot, and I write this blog, but that’s it. To have to sit and really think about each individual word, and try to convey an emotion other than the cheap laughs I try for here… it was wonderful exercise for the grey matter.

The most fun I had was in creating an art piece on the topic of “Birds”. I had planned a model of a bird made out of flattened tin cans, but it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. I decided I’d try to use up some of the plumbing fittings that I had in the basement, and I built a copper sculpture of a goose. It worked out far better than I thought it might. It was tremendous fun and nevermind if it’s great art or not, holding this finished piece in my hands makes me grin from ear to ear. “I made this!”.

(click the picture for larger view)

I think I need to do more of this. Create, for no reason other than creation itself. We all do.

What have you made recently?

I often think this as we put on our historical outfits and go to events with our local Historical Re-enacting group. We dress and act like it’s 1815, and the tourists watch, and we have a good time.

But really, I have no idea what I’d do in 1815. My eyes are so bad, I’d be nearly useless without a very expensive pair of incredibly thick glasses. My skills are primarily in areas that have only been useful as a career in the last 15 years or so. I don’t even really know how to go to the bathroom 200 years ago.

Sure, I can do some things with my hands. I can frame a basement (useless 200 years ago), wire a circuit (useless 200 years ago) and solder plumbing (useless 200 years ago). I’d be the lowest of manual labourers, because I have the skills to work a shovel. Those haven’t changed in the last 200 years. Much.

I know, there are not many skills from then that would transfer forward either, but it still makes me think about how radically different our world is from theirs in such a relatively short time. What are my great-grandkids going to do that makes no sense now? I sit and think about how transitory our time is, right now.

It’s only right NOW that I have the opportunity to parent my kids. Not later. Not when I have a bigger house. Not when I’m done this other work. Not when the messes are all cleaned up. Now is the only now that I’ve got, because things change quickly. Sometimes I get paralyzed with the enormity of that.

It’s a good thing that I live now, not earlier or later. My kids need me now, not earlier or later.

Also, I know how to go to the bathroom here.