Tag Archives: makerspaces

A letter for me.

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“Write me my affirmations.” I directed Alyssa. There wasn’t a whole lot for her to do at the meeting while we fiddled with the laser downstairs.

“But I don’t have anything to write on.”

I sighed, knowing that I would gladly leap to solve any problem she had, but probably shouldn’t. “You are not helpless. You are a very clever girl. I have faith in you.”

“Okay, MARK.” She spat her husband’s name at me with a tone I recognized, on that I had used before, substituting the name Josh instead. It took me until this moment to realize what a weak argument that was.

“Wow, that’s really your response?” I had already started walking backwards out of the room and could no longer see her.

She raised her voice. “If you’re gonna say things like him, I’m gonna call you on it.”

“Maybe he’s just right.”

She yelled vivaciously from the other room, full of defiance and spitfire. “NO. THAT COULD NEVER BE THE CASE.” I smiled as I went down the stairs, wondering if she’d actually work on it. After all, I had given her the assignment of writing down positive things about me about two weeks ago.

–

She came down to the shop a little while later, and began playing with my hair. She smirked, saying that she was gonna “Pippi Longstocking” me. As she pulled my hair into short, tight braids, I sighed and resigned myself to my fate. Then, presumably bored, she traipsed upstairs again to see what Denise was up to.

I wandered the space. I found a chunk of plexiglas that someone had lasered something out of, leaving several inches of wasted space in the material. I picked it up and walked over to Mark. “One thing that I really hate about this place is that there’s not a single person that has a clue how to use materials effectively.”

He was less miffed, and being his traditionally sassy self. “Out of all the things that are wrong in the world, including your hair, that is what you focus on?”

“You’re one of them, you know.” I said, thinking back to several times that I’ve seen him set up materials.

“Yes, I’m one of the things that are wrong with the world.”

Despite the fact that he’s one of the most important and productive people that are involved with the makerspace, there’s no point in engaging with him while he’s having an incompetence fit. I headed back upstairs.

–

First thing I did was head to the fridge to grab a soda. As I walked towards her, Alyssa hissed at me and shielded the papers she had strewn out around her. I guess she really was working on my letter. I smiled and went towards Denise instead.

–

When the first set of puzzle piece structure was finished in the laser, I asked Mark “Is there a method to the madness here? Which ones are which?” Each segment had 6 pieces and the pair of them were slightly different. He explained the order and I opened up the laser to pick them out. Knowing the difference between the pieces, I felt confident that I knew what I was doing, so I just scooped them together and plucked them up randomly.

“So I guess it doesn’t matter even if there was an order.”

I smiled brightly and shook my head.

Mark sighed as he put in the next sheet. “Thanks sweetie.”

–

When Alyssa handed me an envelope, I beamed at her. I was very excited. It was thick with several sheets and had my first and middle name on it in cheery, loopy handwriting.

“If that’s not still sealed by the time we leave here today, I take back everything I said in it.”

“Okaayy…”

–

Denise left early, wishing us the best as it had taken her and Stacey 6 hours to put together the tab and slot structure. Mark went to the auto parts store, hoping to fix the forklift. This left Alyssa and I alone with all the paperboard pieces of the prototype. We worked industriously and listened to Andrew Bird.
After Mark showed up again, I stole his abandoned pair of glasses and put them on.
He didn’t when he sat down. I came to the end of the first side of the construction, and began to fiddle with the second spiral. “Yeah, you can do this part. I don’t wanna.”

Alyssa graciously began inserting and bending tabs, very quickly becoming adept at it. The spiral spun and spun and spun some more. Mark fiddled on his phone, periodically showing something interesting to us or reading bits of an article. Alyssa was reaching the end of the spiral again, about a half hour later when she exasperatedly said “Are you really not gonna notice that she’s wearing your glasses?”

“Why should I care?” Ever so generous, that one.

We spent a little time fiddling with the various lenses and then came the question.

“What do we do now?”

“I guess we go home.”

They began packing up. Mark stalked up behind me and wordlessly pulled his glasses from my face. I glared at him. “What?” There are times I feign anger just so that I get to enjoy the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles defensively.

We hugged, we left, I came home, I wrote. And now I have a letter to read.

I can’t wait.

Long day.

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I woke up early, under the advisement to see the day as an opportunity to create. The night before, Denise had been teasing me lightly about my last blog post via text. Very shortly, I was in her car, driving to a storage place as a GRMakers field trip. At one point during our conversation, I turn on my hippie voice and declare “I’m just one of those artist types, man.”
Quick and devilishly observant as ever, Denise replied “So you need constant reassurances and validation?”
She had me. “I don’t know abou- Yes.”
As we laughed and I made faces to exaggerate my hurt, I was actually feeling a little stung. She was quick to reassure me. “It’s totally okay, I am too.”

We reached our destination, a large brick building with an entryway of swooping curved metal. We were there to meet a guy who buys up the fixtures and furniture of businesses that close down and resells it. His warehouse is massive. The downstairs is rented out, and we passed factory workers, who would look up from either their phones or their work and watch us curiously. There were rows upon rows upon rows of racks filled with racks or barrels or little metal tidbits. The place seemed endless. Then we got upstairs, where we could really dive into the miscellany that we were there to look at.

~

As I walked up to rest of the group(inspecting desks), Buttercup broke from the herd to say hi and pulls me aside. “You know, as you were walking up here- today is the first time I can like SEE that you’ve lost weight. You’re like a different person.” Sometimes I think he says these things just to perplex me. It’d be within his personality to drop weird statements to throw me off. He’s one of my truest friends, but about 12% of the time he’s an asshole. There’s the 88% of the friendship where he builds me up and we joke together and muse about people, but the 12% can rip you right down(hence the nickname Buttercup). I didn’t get his motives, he had a funny look on his face and we’ve got enough history of us pushing each other that I’m generally second, third, and fourth guessing anything he says.

I don’t usually see the lost weight(about 45 pounds), I just see how far I have to go to. And I’m certainly not a different person. In fact, that’s the wall I keep bumping into with my mental health. I know that no matter how I progress or what changes I make, I’m still me. And I’d still be living my life. But the real key of this whole experience was that it’s winter. This is the first time he’s seen me without a hoodie or jacket on in months. Of course I finally look like I’ve lost weight.

~

As a fledgling makerspace, this place was ideal to outfit the place. We eagerly plotted about desks, chairs, materials racks, transformers, carts, saws, dust collectors, fans, cables, shelves, and a welding table. The two things that interested me most were the barrels of chain(for my chain horse idea) and these great big metal spoke wheels that were pulled from an overhead conveyance system. When I saw them, I saw Giraffecycle.

Giraffecycle is a very old idea of mine, I’ve wanted to build her since I was a small child. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. A pedal powered vehicle in the shape of a giraffe. Preferably life size, and with an articulating neck.

Building her would be a dream come true.

Eh, probably never gonna happen. But there’s power in dreaming, and I was basking in that joy for the rest of the day.

~

 
After that I went to work. The slightest task can become a festival of tangents there. All I had to do was assemble two more parts to fill an order. I made the argument for setting up a machine to make new parts for an order, but my father insisted that I sand some polished display hinges to send them out, he’d rather get the order out ASAP. I didn’t want to throw away the work that someone had already put into polishing them, but I did as he asked. It involved chucking up the little lathe with a thin rod wrapped in sandpaper and center drilling one end. Then put the rod between the chuck and the live center support, and after more fiddling around, flipped on the lathe and started to sand the tricky inner curve of the part.

The sandpaper immediately shredded. We had center drilled the wrong end, so the sandpaper was wrapped wrong. More fiddling around, cleaning the rod and replacing the papers. But I got it done, went to the other buffing jack to sand the rest of the part, and reassembled the hinge. Then we realized there are no more flanges, and my father decides that if I have to make 2, I should make eight instead, that way the whole order will match instead of some having a zinc finish and some plain.

So I start welding flanges. At one point, I notice some moisture on my glove. I was baffled. I looked at the ceiling for a leak, I wonder if maybe I had wiped my nose or something without remembering. Then I look at the torch. The water cooled TIG welding torch. There was a leak.

I only had two more parts left, 125 amps of electricity and a leaking torch, bad idea, but surely it could hold out for two more parts? The next arc strike makes my hand tingle. BETTER NOT.

I watched for a moment as my dad repaired the leak. “I guess I’ll go vacuum or something.”
“Don’t you want to know how to do this next time it happens?”
“Yeah, but I also feel bad for not being productive right now.”
I stayed standing right there, productivity be damned. Learning is important too.

Repair complete, I finish the parts and my father and I had another discussion, where it was determined that we should indeed set up the CNC machine and run more new parts. Turns out that the 2 pieces I had worked so hard on had a different hole pattern than the rest. It took until after I sanded away the nice polished finish that I was so keen to preserve earlier. Sigh.

~

My evening was spent at Celebrate Recovery and ended with squeezing arms wrapped around my ribcage. Trudy came to visit me and brought with her a hand lettered card for me with a quote from Sir Francis Bacon. It represents our shared struggles and was really very sweet. It’s going on my wall.

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.”

Right now I am certain of only one thing; that it’s time for bed.