It's Been Awhile; I'm Sorry

Hi it's me! You might remember me from my maker-related posts and my project updates and wow... It's been a long time since I've posted. Ya see, things got a little crazy in my life over the past 6 weeks and the ability for me to head down to my shop and do anything was diminished, then utterly gone for the last two weeks. Working in the shop would be dangerous, since I have blood issues and a cut could be dangerous, and the fatigue makes any shop-related stuff unwise. But the treatments are over and I'm back now, so let's do a few updates on what I'm working on and hopefully get back in the swing of things (at least until surgery in a few weeks but that's a whole other ballgame!). First the big one: I got a new tool! A big and expensive one.

I've wanted a laser cutter for a long time so I finally pulled the trigger. I want it to take my projects to the next level and the Glowforge has been the one I wanted for a long time, so I got the Plus model and I'm super excited about the flexibility it's going to bring me. I'm learning how to use it and even though I had a big gap in my shop time, now that I'm getting back it's one of the first tools I want to really start churning out projects with. I'm confident it's going to make me money and I can't wait to learn it.

Secondly, I'm working on a knife! I bought a kit from Rockler and made myself some really nice purple heart scales for it. I'm looking forward to finishing it and I just got my first set of rasps today for shaping the finished product.

I've never done anything knife related (except restoration and sharpening) so this is definitely outside my comfort zone but that's how we grow, right?

Onto update number three: After a large client project I realized something about my 3D printer setup: if I'm going to do production runs in-house, I need to not rely on printers other than the best, and for me that's a Prusa i3 Mk3. After the last client job, I ordered another one so now my setup will be two simultaneously running i3 Mk3 printers, which is good because I won't have to have different profiles for different printers on the same project. I like the predictability of that.

Next, I'm working on me and part of the work on me involves integrating gratitude into my thinking much more than I used to, and part of that is a phrase that has become my mantra: be anxious for nothing, be grateful for all things. It's a surprisingly potent phrase so I made a mirror for next to our front door so that every time I walk out of the house I see that phrase as I leave.

Gratitude can be life-changing when practiced and can change your perspective even when you're at your bottom, so I would highly recommend if you're feeling low or you feel like life is piling up against you try to recognize all you have to be grateful for and embrace that instead. It's transformative.

Lastly, I've been stocking up on console systems (NES and SNES) that need refurbishing and I'm going to dip my toe into fixing and flipping retro consoles in the coming weeks. It's something I've been diving into as far as learning what to do and how to fix stuff, and based on how hot the market is for retro gaming, I'd be a fool not to take a crack at it. Next week my first non-functioning systems arrive and I'm really looking forward to getting them into the hands of customers who will play and enjoy them! And that's basically it! I'm back as much as I can be and I'm looking forward to updating this blog regularly again as life slowly goes back to "normal" for a little while.

Thanks for reading!