Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Not much is stopping me/us from doing this now, but

What would you do if money was no object?

Like you win a smallish lottery, so you are set at your current lifestyle, but aren't starting a super-model and Lambroghini collection. You decide after a short while you have to DO something.  Get good at doing something that also makes you money.

I know some people would LOVE to sell Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door. Their brain is wired for sales.  They'd enjoy the hell out of that, especially if they didn't have to make a living at it by killing themselves with hours.  

Me?  I sorta did this in the 1990s.  I was a professional brewer.  Hard work, but fun, and I loved what I made.  If it paid well and there was no bottling line I'd be doing it up until 4 years ago when the onset of an undiagnosed cancer would have taken me out of the game.

I expected, like other members of my family, to at least be physically capable of doing stuff well into my 70s and perhaps beyond.  Let's see if I can get back to that with these treatments

Other things I might want to do, and if I was still capable, mind.  Remember, selling your output is of no consequence.  You'd give it away if you had to, but if someone wants to buy it, great

  • Work in my cabinet makers shop making nothing but barrister bookcases.  Not out of pallet wood, but like that guy.  Just barrister bookcases.  They are valuable even without dressing it up with carvings and what not.  Plus I have the skills to do it right now.  What I don't know I can suss out without assistance.  The rest on the list I have a steeper learning curve, requiring outside intervention or more prep time.  
  • Clockmaking.  Making Marine Chronometers, though.  Absolutely useless product in the days of GPS, but neat anyway.  There is a horological school in Switzerland and this is what you make.  To learn the trade and move on to Rolexes, presumably.  Sorta like Louis XVI!
  • Gunsmithing, natch.  But if there is one thing I learned at the gunsmith is that dealing with gun-owning customers is a pain.  So I'd not do that.  Just make 1911s, and just sell them through a gunstore/s of an owner I knew.  On consignment if necessary. 
  • Bookbinding and printing.  Make short runs of public domain works.  Probably Lovecraft.  Have top find some artist type to do the etching for original endplates, but I'd do the rest.  Not the papermaking.  Phew, a lot of the lottery winning would go to the machines and also a machine shop to repair same.  Plus I'd miss the earlier graphic design training.  There is SO much to know that I don't.  But this is what my grandmother's family did.  This and spring water selling. Grandfather's side was cheesemakers then shopkeepers.
  • Planemaker, making infills.  
  • But hell, if I had my health I might just do like Churchill and just be a bricklayer.  For fun.  
I'm not a car guy, but I can see where folks would really love doing that for fun.  Same thing with pottery, or glass-blowing.  Or leatherwork.  I'd love to learn how to weld well.  

Others would go fishing.  But that's also not for me. Carve figures of old men with a wittling knife out of Linden wood.  

See what I mean, tho?  Unless you are super talented right out of the gate, it'd prolly be a while before you made any money on the above, so, best to have another source.    

3 comments:

Laura said...

I'd want to learn how to tablet weave properly, with decent instruction and a mentor.

I find it calming, but because "gifted student" I end up getting extremely frustrated with myself and giving up. A proper instructor could help me get over that frustration.

And then I'd make fun things, like bag straps and belts and collar/leash combos and bridle straps and...

Marty said...

I'd still drink coffee and make stuff up.

Jonathan H said...

I'd expand my gun collection, buy a great place to use them, and fund those fighting gun laws.