Tuesday Thoughts 7/22/2014

I've decided to start a thing called Tuesday Thoughts. "Why Tuesday?" you may be thinking. I picked Tuesday because in the world of weekly fads or rituals Tuesday doesn't have much to compete with (with the exception of Taco Tuesday). Monday has that man crush thing, Wednesday has the woman crush thing, Thursday is all about throwbacks and Friday, Saturday and Sunday need no special social day. Everyone is too busy soaking up their free time to bother assigning anything to them. In any case, its Tuesday, and I have thoughts. I've recently been considering my future. After I graduated from school I thought the sky was the limit but soon after I was slowly drowned in a hefty dose of reality. Why I thought my career would just be handed to me on a silver platter is not a question I can answer. I guess I felt that my skills and training would be well sought after, I was a bit wrong. I picked a career path that requires a large amount of time, effort and money. I've found this realization difficult to express to many of my friends and family. This is mainly because most people, through no fault of their own, never consider where all their belongings come from or how they are made. I once told a friend that as far as most people are concerned, guitars just grow on trees, plucked by guitar farmers and are thrown in boxes then shipped to guitar center. The process is very long, labor intensive and requires a keen eye. If you don't like the sound of any of those words and have a crap ton of money, you can dish out a fortune for a CNC machine and a programmer to cut everything out for you. Keep in mind however, that buying all the machinery required to make one by hand is no inexpensive option. My hands hurt when I think about how the luthiers made guitars in the old days. I'm lucky that I live in a more modern time period because I value my limbs. Before I end up going into every detail about how you build a guitar i'll come around to my point. I need opportunity and more experience. The stories I hear or read about guitar builders and techs are often the same. Most start working at some hole in the wall or work under someone more experienced then them. From there, they move onto bigger and brighter things. I want that. I want to ease my way in working for people that have made mistakes, people that have cut their teeth and know what to say when you screw up. I miss the workshop environment. If I try diving into this business head first I'm destined for massive head trauma. Ohio is not proving to be very fruitful for the kind of ambition and quality of workmanship that I'm looking for. There are a few jewels in the bunch but not many. I've had my eyes set on Portland Oregon for years now. Its a wonderful city full of musicians and guitar shops. The people also express such a tremendous amount of appreciation for handcrafted goods made locally. I have family there that I miss very much and thus a decent support network in case I get into a bad situation. Its the promised land as far as I'm concerned. I'm hoping to get out there by the beginning of next year. Maybe then I will find what I'm looking for. I'll be back next Tuesday for more thoughts, unless I completely forget. See ya then.