Originally Posted by
Mark Bolton
Either is fine as long as your truly at peace with the process... For me at least, ritual, in anyones life, should be stomped out with the utmost of force. Ritual = the utmost of hackerdom for the sake of perceived sanity.
This is a really interesting comment, Mark.
Personally, I enjoy ritual and find that it gives me peace -- starting with the ritual of making morning coffee, and bringing some to my sweetie. It's taken me years to start incorporating mindful awareness of my own sensations and behaviors into my process. I was very suspicious of it, yet increasingly I don't regret the inefficiency it brings to my life. Even something as simple as feeding the dog is a richer experience when I pause to look into her fuzzy face and and appreciate how much she's anticipating her chow. I even finally learned to enjoy sharpening (a formerly annoying time waster) by appreciating the edge as it comes up to a gleam.
OTOH, I don't make a living with my woodworking, and I do understand the necessity to balance awareness against a sense of urgency in a professional environment. For me, right now, ritual serves two purposes: it settles my mind and lets me enjoy what I'm doing with less hard-driven panic about outcomes, and it reminds me to "checklist" my process as I go. For me, those checks along the way result in fewer errors and less re-work.
That having been said, my project plans often are literally "sketchy," and if I could get away without drawing anything, I probably would.
--Jack S. Llewyllson
Gratitude is a gift to yourself.
Purity tests are the bane of human existence.
Codeine takes the pain from every muscle but the heart.