I’ve decided to become a furniture maker. My goal isn’t to be a businessman, but a craftsman. People will ask me personally to make furniture for them. Most of us dream about quitting our day jobs and doing something we’re passionate about for a living. This is a foolish thing to do quickly. To leave your job tomorrow and pronounce yourself say, a chef, only works for people who have worked hard to prepare their life for such a moment. So here I am at the preparation stage. I need to get good enough at making furniture that people will pay me for it.
In some sense, the decision has already been made for me. As many people who’ve followed my path have discovered, there comes a point in your life where you’ve filled up your house with tables, chairs, cabinets, desks, shelves, boxes, beds, and lamps. Where do you put your next creation? Certainly not on the curb. And while it may make your home warmer as it combusts in the fireplace, surely someone out there could find something better to do with it. It may take me a few years to fill my house with furniture, but the time will come.
This is what makes life worth living
Making things from wood is immensely satisfying. Of course the goal is the finished piece, but it’s just as much about the process. When you’re completely absorbed in what you’re doing and enjoying it, it’s called flow. When you lose sense of time, when you’re so immersed and focused that you realize you’ve forgotten to eat lunch, you’re in that flow state. I spend almost all of my free time in this state and when I’m exhausted, I go home and design more projects to work on. I know that even if I never sell a single piece of furniture that my time will have been well spent.
There are problems, though. It’s hard making a living as a furniture craftsman. Many pros will tell you that. People get their furniture from China these days through big box stores. Even if you buy high end furniture, you’re likely getting something that comes out of a factory. For too many furniture craftsman, the reality is that it simply takes too long to singlehandedly make a piece that will sell for a price that will sustain them. So my plan is to start doing this on the side and eventually, having saved enough money, to retire early and supplement my income with the sales of my craft.
I have no idea what I’m doing
My plan isn’t that different from everyone else who makes this decision. Get on social media. Start a blog. Practice making and designing. Document your progress. Attract attention. So here it is, a WordPress site hosted on a Raspberry Pi. Some woodworkers have found that there’s a more profitable product to make than furniture: videos on how to make furniture. I’m one of the countless woodworkers who have benefitted from such videos. I don’t see myself going down that route, but you never know where a venture like this could take you. That’s just one of many exciting things about making a decision so momentous and rife with possibility.