Dullness and The Stone

I'm making dinner. Cooked rice and butter are snapping and crisping in the big cast iron skillet. Another skillet holds sliced carrots, a bit of water, salt, and pepper. I'll add butter and spice to that in a bit. Soon I'll cook eggs to go over the rice, douse it with a few shakes of soy sauce and a bit of sesame oil. Our version of fried rice.

While I simmered dried rice in water, I tried once again to sharpen my knife with a stone and oil.

I'm not very good at it.

There are devices for sharpening knives. Friends say they work well. I should probably get one, but I won't. I want to learn how to use a stone and sharpen by hand. I'll likely ruin my knife in the process and have had to work with a knife far from properly sharp, but I want to learn how to do this.

I've watched videos and read tutorials, but sharpening a knife is best learned through a teacher present in the room, who corrects the mistakes I make.

In this, I'm a poor teacher and student at the school of trial and error. I require so many trials to figure out even one of my errors. Learning to refill my fountain pen, I wore ink for years. Sharpening knives, I may not even have the right stone and I'm sure there are whole levels of the process I'm not yet imagining.

However, I sharpened the knife best I know how. Cutting carrots afterward, there was no denying I'd given the knife a better edge than it had and a better edge than I could have given it last year. I'm learning something.

Why not just get the device that will sharpen things properly? Why not go with what works?

I like working things out and, much as I complain, I like the practice of learning through trial and error. I like developing skills even when no one will notice. The knife isn't talking.

There are easy, efficient ways to do things, and then there is oiling a stone and drawing the knife against it, working out the proper angle and best motion. There are the ways that others do things and there are the ways I choose, ways that take me against the current and into strange new worlds.

Later, when the family comes to the table, we will all eat. The food will taste good to all of us — it's one of our favorite meals — but it will taste even better to me as recall the knife slicing through each carrot, the shine on the stone, the ways in which this dull boy is a tad sharper now, and how much sharper I might become.

Prototyping

Yesterday, I had to learn something big. There was no way around having to figure it out other than quitting my job. That hardly seemed a reasonable response to a challenge. Learning might suck, but it beats the hell out of running away, so I worked my way into it.

I did not figure everything out or get it all right. I figured a couple things but also ran into new questions and challenges. So it goes. I know better what's left to learn and have vague ideas how to get there. Mostly, I need to keep going.

I made some mistakes too. A staff member asked about doing something. I said to go ahead despite a hazy doubt somewhere in my mind. An hour later I realized the mistake. Damn it. I'll redo things today, clean up my mess. No big deal, but it reminds me what sucks about learning, especially when I'm in prototype mode.

The first time through, things are terribly difficult. I don't know enough to do well, don't know enough to even realize mistakes until after I've made them. Then, seeing how I've screwed up, I want to quit. Instead, as Steely Dan wisely instructs, I go back, Jack, do it again, wheels turning round and round. Next time, I notice a few more mistakes, make some new ones, and am almost as frustrated as the first time. Almost. I'm still in prototype stage. The thing works, maybe just barely. I'm nowhere near finished and can't know how many iterations I'll need. Eventually, I'll build something that works, something on which I'm making refinements, something natural and elegant.

I want to get to that end right away if not sooner, but there's no bypassing the practice, prototyping, and iterative creation of systems. It's slow and frustrating work, but I've yet to find another way into the promised lands. The sooner I make that first prototype and open myself to making mistakes through which I learn (no matter how much that sucks), the sooner I'll develop expertise, comfort, and a working machine.

In other words, I need to keep going.

The prototype functions, albeit with sparks, smoke, and impending failure. I see how to trim the edges, realign the pieces, and employ new materials in the next prototype. That one will probably still might smolder, maybe explode, but it will lead to the next prototype and someday to something that will seem to have sprung full-form as though by magic.

Today there will be another big thing to learn and more mistakes to be made, but today might also be the day something works. Let's go find out.