kim191•24d ago

Caught myself at 400 fire pokers and had to sit down

Fired out number 400 for the same customer in Troy, Ohio this morning and realized I've quietly made more of those than anything else in 22 years of smithing, so what's the one item you never intended to specialize in that just sort of happened?

2 comments

2 Comments

paulw8724d ago

Did anyone actually start out wanting to make nothing but fire pokers forever? Sounds like you got stuck in a good groove, but I'd argue that's not really specializing, that's just falling into a rut. You probably told yourself it was steady work and easy money, but 400 of the same thing means you stopped learning a long time ago. That's not a specialty, that's a habit.

uma68523d ago

man i get what you're saying @paulw87, but for me it was the opposite. i started out wanting to do all sorts of stuff, and ended up doing like 300 birdhouses because people kept asking for them. turns out that repetition made me super fast and i figured out all the little tricks to make them last longer. yeah it got boring at times, but that boring phase taught me more than my first 50 random projects combined.