Having stuff made!
I love learning how stuff is made and making stuff. meme font: “Everyone be like: what kind of stuff??”
Anything, I swear. It started when I was like 12-13 at the public library trying to figure out how computers work, which led to me learning BASIC and then kind of being able to make the computer “do things” - anything your imagination could come up with. That kind of freedom when you’re young is huge. But it was always stuck on the screen. I wanted to make things you could hold and touch, etc. Fast forward however many years - I started being able to do that with clothing. That was the first project. I knew nothing about the process of making a dress shirt. More samples than I can count and years later - I’m still learning, but I love it - love the learning part. It’s magical to watch a few boring materials on their own turn into an “object” than the sum of their parts.
It’s now become a hobby that consumes a decent amount of my daily life. Over the past 2-3 years I’ve learned a tiny bit about the process and had things made using: fine metal jewelry casting, slip-cast ceramic and porcelain manufacturing, marble work and the cutting/honing and engraving that can be done with it, light-weight cast concrete manufacturing, carbon fiber molding both wet-lay-up and pre-preg with autoclave, water jet cutting, and just starting to learn a bit more about CNC machines. I was super specific about those as they are all part of a very tiny “collection” I’m coming out with in a couple months - I hope.
Why the hell would you spend all that time and money learning those things to get a bunch of little trinkets, objects made - most which are fairly useless? Right now - because its fun and it opens your mind a ton. The more you learn and have things made - the more you think about the objects around you, how you could make them differently in a way that matters to you…maybe to other people, thus making it a business if thats what you’re after. It’s something I encourage people to try if you can - its like being an intern or an apprentice for a few hours or days…it reminds you how true this quote is:
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”