Crafting A Path to Happiness

If you had told me five years ago that I would ever be woodturning pieces that I was sufficiently proud of to show my friends and family, I would have laughed. “I am rubbish at making things,” would have been my response, or something to that effect. So, to have been told that I would one day be selling my handcrafted work, would have seemed impossible. I always told myself that the logical conclusion of my not being very good at drawing (I’m still not) and being pretty bad at art in school, was that I was not artistic or good with practical tasks. I was not someone who made things. I was a thinker who could only express themselves with words and was creative only in the sense that I could come up with ideas but as soon as I tried to practically translate them into anything beautiful, I’d be disappointed. I self-labelled based on very little experience of craft and was fixated on the outcome with no regard for how the process felt.

“I can tell when I’m out of alignment because I become focused on outside goals and objectives as opposed to the joy of life.” Gabrielle Bernstein. Super Attractor.

This problematic, and all to celebrated, outcome-orientation infiltrated many major life decisions. I believed that if I worked hard at school, got good exam results and went to a top university, this would automatically result in happiness – that my purpose would magically appear and fall into place in adulthood. Well, that didn’t quite happen for me. While I have loved many of the experiences that I’ve been fortunate enough to have in my academic and working life, I feel I was so busy reaching to achieve the next external accomplishment that I never really stopped to fully examine what I wanted from life. Hence, my not even realising that creativity was a hugely important facet of my character that I needed room to express! I would throw myself into whatever experience I was currently in and morph myself to whatever was needed for that situation.

Two years ago, I embarked on a masters in Psychology with the intention of diving into a doctorate afterwards. I went from teaching full-time, which often involved spending much of my own time planning and marking, to suddenly being a student again. With that, came fairly limited course contact time and spending a lot of time writing essays at home alone (well, with Winston my rabbit for company). I basically got a slight head start on the working from home situation that many will have experienced in the past year! This slower pace freed me to think and look inwards which led to the, extremely frightening, realisation that I had very little idea what I truly wanted from life. Years of reaching for what I thought should be my goals, pushing for the next logical step had given way to what now felt like a desperate grapple for my purpose. I was ambitious and had all this energy inside of me, but no longer felt like I knew where to direct this. I was enjoying the masters because I love learning about the human mind, but as far as the prospect of heading straight for an intense doctorate, I no longer felt sure that this was my next step. While this wake-up was necessary and a much-needed pivot in my life, at the time it was scary and led me to a low place. I was frustrated and disappointed in myself. Why couldn’t I just settle?

“To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting. Drifting is what one does when looking at lateral truth.”  Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

It was then that my insightful boyfriend said he thought I was a ‘frustrated artist’. He suggested I needed a creative outlet to immerse myself in, and so began this wonderful journey. A few years prior to this, when I first visited his family home, he’d helped me to turn a candlestick. I’ll be honest, I had never heard of woodturning until this point! It was fun and I was rather proud of the candlestick I’d made however it certainly didn’t occur to me to take this up as a hobby from that point on. Firstly, this – craft – was somebody else’s realm within which I did not belong and secondly, I was still so busy following the path I thought I should follow at that point, that I hadn’t reached the point of realising I needed to let my creativity run free. Yet, I never forgot the feeling I had that day, the immersion in the task and the pride of what I’d made (albeit with a lot of help). So, when I did reach the point that I needed craft as an outlet, the world of woodturning opened up to me like an old friend welcoming me home. I know that sounds strange but as soon as I started using my lathe something felt ‘right’. I actually didn’t care that I wasn’t instantly good at turning and that what I was creating, the outcome, was less than ideal. I loved the process! Without the fixation on the perfect outcome, I gave myself the space to develop my skill at my own pace, trying out designs and techniques simply because I wanted to not because I ‘should’. I think that has made me a better woodturner than I would have been had I been obsessing on, and trying to force, the outcome.

Initially, woodturning was just a delightful hobby and a relief from the stresses of modern life; but now I have decided to take the plunge with this exciting venture and combine running this business with other work commitments. This next step became clearer to me throughout the pandemic, when woodturning became an important ally to my wellbeing, and with the support of family and friends who have been so encouraging. I have loved the process so far and have so many plans for how I want to develop Wrought To You. It means the world to share the work which I feel has changed my life so beautifully.

www.wroughttoyou.co.uk