The sweet, cancerous aroma of MDF has filled the workshop this week. I've been sweating it out in PPE making template after template for the desk legs. I have an affliction. A curse. A Spectre who haunts me, nags me incessantly, and refuses to let me leave well enough alone.
The desk design is sold. Agreed upon. Approved. Deposit paid. The templating stage is supposed to be tweaks and verifying that the paper drawings will stand up in all three dimensions. And I did that. I finished! It stands! Onto the build!
As I was packing up and patting myself on the back for a job well done, the Spectre flicked my earlobe. "That's good. But I have a better idea..." And so I find myself repeating the process. Drawing-board out. New templates cut. More time spent. Doubling the personal cost of this phase in the hope the Spectre will leave me be. And he was right, it is better now. 'Good enough' is not something that leaves this workshop as often as it should.
The template stage is low consequence and all hope. I'm never entirely sure if the Spectre is a genuine commitment to the craft, or a sort of fear-based active procrastination. MDF is cheap and the health problems it causes are future Jake's problem. But the slowness it creates and the anxiety that causes is very much a present-day issue.
Not to be outdone by the workshop fella, the kitchen Spectre is the harshest of them all. Tomorrow I'll be hosting friends for lunch so Friday is prep day. I could go and buy some lepinja rolls (a Balkan style of bread, a bit like Turkish). That would be good enough. But the Spectre has me leavening some dough instead. I could buy some urnebes. But guess who's roasting capsicums from the garden instead. I could... OK actually I couldn't buy the dessert: I'm turning a Balkan tikvarnik, a kind of baked pumpkin custard, into a pipe-able tikvarnik-creme which will be piped onto shards of crisp filo, nestled amongst scoops of dark malt ice cream, drizzled with a piping hot Earl Grey gastrique.
I don't know why I do this to myself. But I do know it smells a whole lot better than MDF.
Making furniture is like watching crops grow. It feels like nothing is happening until all of a sudden there's a desk-shaped object on the workbench. Cooking has a much faster creativity-to-reward feedback loop. Perhaps that's why I find it a release, not a burden.
Anyhow, next week I'll be back onto the mock-it-up-in-pine stage. And, doubtless, negotiating once again with the Spectre.