I've been having a rough go at life recently, kind of burnt myself out and got lost with where I wanted to go, and what I wanted to do. I have minimal savings left, unemployed, living at home again in this dead town, at a crossroads basicly. Tonight we were watching this travel show on tv, and the guy was visiting this one church in particular and I was really impressed and inspired by it's intricate, often hand carved, millwork, the pews, post and beam design, mainly the carpentry related elements but the architecture in general and of course the context of it being a church(though I'm not really a devout, or even practicing christian). I just said out loud, as if it were the most logical, clear, and natural thaught "I bet theres a lot of churches that need restorative work done". As soon as the words were out of my mouth I felt this emense sense of relief like a blindfold had been taken off or something. Then my sister said "ya, and I bet there's a lot of chruches all over Europe that would put you up and pay ya to do it". A solution for the soul and wallet , not a definate, end all be all, but a damn fine idea to point me in the right direction. I just finished a sustainable building course earlier this year, but it was only 5 months, and wasn't enough to really give me any direction, or even a shoe in for a job. So I've been stressing out about the idea of having to go mainstream and getting a regular old carpentry aprenticeship to pay the bills(including the expense of buying and insuring a decent vehicle, a 'must have' for the sort of work) and join the wastefull and desturctive suburbia errecting workforce. In essence sell my soul for the chance of getting qualified to eventually do the sort of work I wanted to do(even though I wasn't even totally sure what that was). Aswell, the program I took, while it's something I'm sure I'll go back to, or even intigrate into future projects just didn't capture me as THE thing I wanted to do. Infact the only portions of the course I truely enjoyed were those which touched on traditional methods like dry stone masonry, or joinery(old style timber framing). Long story short, I've decided to just try and find the best high paying seasonal work possible for the spring and summer to save up as much cash as I can. Hopefully by september enough for tuition(community college is super cheap) and books and a good part of my rent. I'll also have to incure a bit of student debt but it doesn't matter because I'm taking another swing at college!(a prospect that's freaked me out before). It's a 2 year program at Algonquin College: Restorative Heritage Carpentry and Millwork, VERY hands on. Had heard about it before, but it had kinda slipped to the back of my head and then came to mind as soon as I had the moment of clarity tonight. I have a real fucked up way of going about life, shit just always seems to creep up on me like that, and then it's clear as day, but it feels damn good to have some direction again... ...this may all be aided by the fact that I've been more or less off the herb for a good 3 weeks now, and got over my false pride of not taking anti-depressents (been back on for a week now)
yaaay! That sounds really interesting... if I had any carpentry skills I'd be interested in it too churches can to be soooo freakin beautiful (and I aint' even really Christian) and, good on you for abstaining from the herb
If you need something seasonal a buddy of mine is usually looking for help for his business. That is if you dont mind painting, washing windows, going door to door doing estimates or if youre dedicated enough be some kind of area manager or something like that and make some decent cash. What area are you from?
They're desperate in the UK to recruit people to train in the old skills of thatching, dry stone-walling, masonry, carpentry, restoration etc. Can't understand why someone would want to do a mundane job when they could have such a great skill, and the money is okay too. Good luck!
I'm way out in Bowmanville, so workin in the city would be difficult without a car, but I'll keep it in mind. I was thinking more allong the a lines of tree-planting and farm labour. Probably just end up finding somethng minium wage and minium commitment here in town till April. Anyways, gotta jet, dragging myself outa the house for the weekend to visit my granpa (he's a pretty kick ass grandpa), but thanks for the encouragement and replies! Hope everyone else enjoys the weekend peace
oh that thaught is deffineatly swirling around up in my head too, haha I LOVE dry stone walling/masonry, I helped build a dry stone retaining wall this summer, its such a nice material to work with. I find because of its age, and all the energy that went into forming it, that there's a special sort of synergy or intuition involved between the mason and thier work.
