I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Saturday Reflections, I take time out to reflect.
“Craftsmanship” may suggest a way of life that waned with the advent of industrial society—but this is misleading. Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake. Craftsmanship cuts a far wider swath than skilled manual labor; it serves the computer programmer, the doctor, and the artist; parenting improves when it is practiced as a skilled craft, as does citizenship. In all these domains, craftsmanship focuses on objective standards, on the thing in itself. Social and economic conditions, however, often stand in the way of the craftsman’s discipline and commitment: schools may fail to provide the tools to do good work, and workplaces may not truly value the aspiration for quality. And though craftsmanship can reward an individual with a sense of pride in work, this reward is not simple. The craftsman often faces conflicting objective standards of excellence; the desire to do something well for its own sake can be impaired by competitive pressure, by frustration, or by obsession.
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
My favorite kind of tv show to watch is the reality show skill competition such as Top Chef or Project Runway. I love watching people driven to make beautiful, tasty, innovative work based on highly developed skill. The competitors are dedicated to their craft.
In his book The Craftsman, Richard Sennett writes of the human impulse to do a job well for its own sake. This is craftsmanship. To Sennett, all craft skills, even abstract ones like writing, “begin as bodily practices.” He also argues that “technical understanding develops through the power of imagination.” As a person practices their craft with imagination and bodily activity, they develop a higher and higher degree of skill.
Generative AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude replace the human craft of writing with machines for large-scale production. Just like steel mills replaced blacksmiths working solo or in small groups, Gen AI replaces the high-cost skilled labor of writers. As it does so, it eliminates writers’ continuing and intimate involvement with their materials. That’s something lost in automated production.
Sennett suggests that “resistant” materials — tools or tasks that are not perfectly efficient — can fuel creativity and skill development. Perfectly automated machines stifle it. We see this with the use of Gen AI for writing. In a study of undergraduate and graduate students, researchers found that participants who constructed essays with the assistance of ChatGPT exhibited less brain activity than those who were asked to write on their own, were less likely to be able to recall what they had written, and felt less ownership over their work. Independent evaluators found the AI-supported ones to lack creativity and individuality.
From dirtbag rich to craft rich
In his 2019 book The Dirtbag’s Guide to Life, author Tim Mathis writes of the development of the dirtbag epithet and lifestyle:
Once upon a time, in the 1950s and ‘60s, when countercultures were being born and postwar society was trying to get its act together, a group of young climbers set up camp in the Yosemite Valley. Out of some combination of social rebellion and love of the game, they chose to eschew jobs and traditional lifestyles in favor of scavenged food and a daily life of rock climbing and camping in the Valley for months or years at a time. They allegedly survived on cat food and thievery, and at some point, someone referred to them as a bunch of dirtbags, and the term stuck.
In all likelihood, “dirtbag” was originally intended as an insult, but as is sometimes the case with these things, the climbers, and those who followed them, took it up as a point of pride. They embraced their filthy tents and smelly-ass clothes as signs of commitment to the cause – signs that they were people willing to sacrifice for their passions, and to pursue them even as society rejected them for it.
He developed the concept of dirtbag rich based on this lifestyle:
There are people who riff on the dirtbag approach, who are equally interested in maximizing their time adventuring and minimizing their time working, but who manage to take some of the stress out of pure dirtbaggery by getting jobs where they make more money. I call them the dirtbag rich.
Author Blake Boles, who’s written an entire book about the dirtbag rich lifestyle, says people who practice this lifestyle look for high purpose, high pay when they do work, and high time flexibility.
In an early post from my first reinvention blogging project, I wrote about how this lifestyle called to me:
I know I am not living a life that is classical dirtbaggery, but I feel a call towards more adventure and exploration, more skiing, more art, more volunteering at the animal shelter along with less attention to what society thinks of me, less consumption, and less focus on earning money or prestige.
But recently I am thinking of another kind of rich, another kind of wealthy lifestyle, one devoted to craftsmanship.
Writing here every morning is practicing my craft. My materials are the computer and the keyboard, my WordPress blog editor, my Chrome browser and all the ideas and writing and background I can discover. The more I rely on AI to do the research and summarization for me, the less I meet the friction of my materials, and the less I develop my craft. The more I go to primary or secondary sources myself (not tertiary, like Gen AI models), the less efficient I am, and the more of a crafts(wo)man I am.
I am craft rich in my life. My main source of income is options trading on my income portfolio — another craft of mine. I am reluctant to take on any regular employment lest it mean less time for writing, for painting, for walking dogs (a craft in itself, especially with a leash reactive 65 pound german shepherd-rottweiler mix),
My grandmother, myself
My maternal grandmother was a craftswoman par excellence. She painted in oils and watercolors, producing an ouvre that family members fought over after her passing. She made cute wooden basket purses painted with woods creatures and toadstools. Her Christmas decorations of olive, rust orange, and cream were every bit as transcendent as what you might see in a Martha Stewart magazine. She roasted potatoes that were more delicious than anything I’ve tasted at fine restaurants.
She worked as a Latin teacher while her husband (my grandfather) was deployed during World War II but after that, she didn’t work for pay. She was always working, though, at her various crafts. She did them because she couldn’t stop herself. She did them for the sake of doing them well, and producing wonderful things for herself, her friends, and her family.
When I grew up I told myself I would someday create giant abstract paintings. I took drawing classes in my twenties and thirties. In my forties, I started to teach myself to paint with acrylics, using books and online tutorials. In my fifties, I discovered and developed my own style. Most recently, I exhibited my work in juried shows. But I found that the competition aspects of it destroyed the joy I took in doing something well, something I deemed worthy by my own eye.
Now I seek a lifestyle similar to my grandmother’s: I want to be craft rich like she was.
What does a craft rich lifestyle look like?
Just like the dirtbag rich make money in order to support going on outdoor adventures, the craft rich make money in order to support working as a craftsperson.
The Golden Rule in Mathis’ Dirtbag’s Guide to Life is “go as far as you can with as little as you can…. Being a dirtbag is figuring out how to live your f—ing dreams even though you can’t afford it.”
I find frugality much more fun than simply buying whatever I want whenever I want (a practice I used to follow when I was working full-time as a data scientist).
Some of the ways I support my craft rich lifestyle:
- Using options trading (as I mentioned, a craft of its own) to generate regular income from my portfolio in a way that is less risky and more consistently profitable than simply buying and holding long stock positions
- Budgeting carefully and taking advantage of what I can to reduce my expenses — for example, getting free dog food from the foster organization I work with recently so I don’t have to buy my own for the next six months
- Eliminating activities that don’t bring me enough joy relative to their cost. I find so much joy in my daily crafts that I no longer have an interest in travel, or fancy clothes, and certainly not expensive beauty services like hair highlighting, pedicures, or Botox. I’m not interested in dating anymore because in my experience it involved too much eating out, travel, and gift-giving. Skiing may be next on my not to-do list. This past season was miserable, because I started it with a bad crash and we didn’t get a lot of snow until just now, when many ski areas have already closed.
- Cutting home expenses, which are the biggest part of my budget. This is not an area I’m willing to cut back on by moving, because maintaining a beautiful house in which I can host family or friends is a key craft I want to pursue (like my grandmother did before me). There are many ways to do this — always trying a do-it-yourself fix first for necessary repairs, using my attic fan instead of air conditioning to keep the house cool in summer, calling around for better insurance each year when renewal comes up.
An achievement society devotee would say that this is a waste of time, that what I do with my hours isn’t valuable because I’m not turning it into a business or an audience or any obvious standing in the world.
I am realizing that the key turn in my 1000-day project is to rotate away from the dictates of the achievement society, and one way I’m doing that is by developing my craft rich lifestyle.