Rotating Round Robin Routine
When not traveling for family/grandparenting activities I have settled into a not-very-interesting-for-blogging round robin routine in the barn. Depending on my mood as much as anything else I rotate between the tasks of cleaning and rearranging the barn spaces to reduce my footprint, tinkering with my formulation for Tordonshell, editing sections of the next Roubo volume (Michele is 2-1/2 manuscripts ahead of me, she can translate faster than I can edit and revise), working on the finishing book, editing Gragg video, and working at the bench, mostly on the parquetry and fittings for my tool cabinet. It is all in the “grind it out” category and is not particularly inspiring. There are many weeks I will get to the end and realize that nothing happened in the shop all week that anyone would be interested in.
I’ll work on one thing for an hour or two or three, then move on to a dissimilar activity to keep the juices flowing. If I am sitting down, I make sure the next activity involves standing up and/or moving. One recent adventure involved moving three 300-pound+ workbenches from the fourth floor down to the main floor for my upcoming Woodfinishing workshop (given the ongoing correspondence with my insurance agency this is almost certainly my final workshop hosting event; I will be transitioning the barn from being a business location to being a hobby shop. The in$urance premium implication$ are $taggering for having people here for workshop$. $taggering.)
Like I said, not particularly interesting for the blog but it certainly gobbles up my days.
I’m still looking forward to the finishing book :-)
Insurance has become the 2nd largest cost behind taxes for me to have my own business. The insurance only kicks in after I would pay a deductible that I don’t have the money to pay.
Yeah, it’s a killer. To insure my barn and contents as a hobby shop/farm building costs X number of dollars, once I include professional liability and workshop students (the only reason to have business insurance) it goes to $5X. As a practical matter the only “liability” I will then have is if someone is unhappy with a polissoir or block of wax. The decision to dispense with clients and students is self-evident, especially since I can teach at Joshua Farnsworth’s place near Charlottesville only two hours away. I’m thinking Handworks 2023 will be my last business-related travel outside the region, period.