Working with your hands: the secret to happiness?

This is the title of an article from The Guardian in 2010. An article I identified with as a craftswoman in a world that promotes non sustainable consumerism based in mass production, making hand made objects loose their true value and makes us and our work obsolete.

Although I felt identified with a lot the article says, I feel I have to say thay I don’t agree with the fact that the author grants the need of working with your hands only to men and qualifies “office jobs” as affeminate. I will blame that ridiculous argument to the fact that it was written more than a decade ago. You can read the whole article in the link below so you see what I mean. But I do want to highlight that reading this article (the first part) was very important to me at a moment in life where I was struggling between the unbearable safety of an office job and the terrifying freedom of making a life for myself with woodworking.

It doesn’t mean I think everyone should make a living working with their hands to be happy or that everyone who has an office job is miserable but I do think bringing crafts and manual work into our routine, even if it’s a few minutes or hours a day can bring undeniable benefits to our physical and mental health, and that point is well made by this article.

With this post I begin this Spoon Carving Blog. To share one of the most gratifying practices of woodworking.

Original Article: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/08/working-hands-happiness-burkeman

Author: Oliver Burkeman


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