For 98% of a build, the wood is pale and dusty, but beautiful enough to see its potential.

It stays that way through the lumber yard, every cut, every dry fit, right up until the very end. Then comes the sanding and the finish, and suddenly it looks and feels incredible. That transformation is why I do this.

I didn't choose this life. I think it found me. For almost 20 years, I edited pixels on screens as a digital designer and photographer, just for them to get tossed into the bottomless pit of social media. I'd handed my whole identity over to the work, and it kept taking more than it gave back. I wanted my creativity to make me feel human again, using my hands to make things that exist in the real world.

Leaving a career when you're approaching 40 felt crazy, absolutely, but choosing the unknown came with the exact type of rediscovery and playfulness that led me back to myself.

What I learned was that reconnecting to ourselves and to nature is the source of a more authentic form of creativity, and it flows out of us with more ease the more we develop that bond.

Flow can't be rushed, though. The lumber yard piles dozens of boards on top of each other, no two alike. They're all unique with their own shades of color, highlights, grain patterns, knots, and imperfections. Finding the ones that belong together takes patience while shuffling through, and when you allow that process to unfold naturally, the ones that do just end up finding each other. First cuts are rough on purpose, and the final cut comes later. Sanding is more tedious than you think, with close attention to pressure and movement, but you start to see what it'll end up looking like, and it means the piece is almost done. Then the finish goes on, the color and grain wake up, and those dusty, pale boards become something that gets to be loved for a long time.