Of wood and nails and missing fingers

I was reading through this blog that mentioned shop class and directed me to this site called the New Atlantis. The essay in question is long, but brought an idea to my head regarding my career choice.

Here's a highlight:

"Much of the 'jobs of the future' rhetoric surrounding the eagerness to end shop class and get every warm body into college, thence into a cubicle, implicitly assumes that we are heading to a 'post-industrial' economy in which everyone will deal only in abstractions. Yet trafficking in abstractions is not the same as thinking. White collar professions, too, are subject to routinization and degradation, proceeding by the same process as befell manual fabrication a hundred years ago..."

"So what advice should one give to a young person? By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade. You're likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems. To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable."

So, the question I'm left with is, "Have I wasted my adulthood trying to figure out if the councilman is dicking me around about the proposed 0.5 percent tax increase?" Or should I have been perfecting the world's greatest Oak Home Entertainment Center?

Kind of answers itself, I think.

In the 9th grade, I built a clock in the shape of Texas. It still hangs on the gameroom wall of my parents' house. I've never bothered to frame anything I've written.

On the other hand, I'm not graceful, and fingers are so useful.