Workaholics

[Deadwood]

It's still early in the morning, the light at a low angle as you head to the shed, grab your chainsaw and toss in easily onto the tractor. It's a Saturday morning, and this is certainly no commercial harvest, just a few logs for spare lumber. There is a touch of frost so you have to use the glow plugs to start the tractor, but you are accostomed to that. You are also well aqquainted with the heft of the saw, the skill of dropping a tree, and a smile spreads across your face as a majestic Spruce is brought expertly to the ground. As you limb the tree and wrap a chain around it's base a smile spreads across your face...you are at peace with the world.

If this sounds familiar, I would like to ask you a question.

Is this work or pleasurable hobby?

It sounds like a strange question until you put it in perspective. Most people would consider this work. After all you are hefting one heavy chainsaw, trees are not easy to struggle with and you are getting a tangible benefit from your efforts. You also are certain to feel it in your back at the end of the day, and your arms will be an inch longer from holding the saw. Most hobbies do not have these side effects.

I ask this question because I once began to fill out a form that asked about Hobbies. I put down Forestry, or was going to, until my wife stated that working in the woods was work, not a hobby. Her statement has plagued me ever since she said it.

I can tell you this, I often dread going into the engine house where I work as a Machinist, but I have never once dreaded going out into the woods. Whether it was logging, pruning or planting trees, I have always enjoyed my time out there and only wish that the weather and my days off from work would coincide better.

[moosehunter]

I'll consider it a hobby until someone is standing behind me with a whip and forcing me to do it.
I wise seasoned citizen that admire a great deal told me, " Find something you love to do, then find a way to get someone to pay you to do it". That sounds like happiness to me!
mh

[Ironwood]

I think it boils down to passion. When you lose track of time and are imersed in your task it is truely a passion. The lucky ones in this world are fortunate enough to pursue their passions for a living. There are numerous occupations out there that will provide better enumeration for many, those persuing passions will not thiink those higher paying jobs are even an option.


  It is a passion of yours to be in the woods, and you certainly veiw it as a hobby.




                          REID

[crtreedude]

Warren Buffet who is the second richest person in the USA, said you are rich when everyday you get up and go do what you want.

Rich people don't work - they play!

I have been playing for years...  :D

Some of us just happen to make money on our hobbies. In fact, my family has teased me at times that I don't have ANY hobbies that aren't profitable. I told them my hobby is making money...

If I viewed it as work, I would be working 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week, but since it isn't work, I am not really as tired as I would be.   ;)

[Burlkraft]

Travis,

It's still a hobby if it's like the scene you set. Early Sat. morning, the tractor, your saw and mother nature. No boss, no pressure just you in the woods. I am semi-retired now and just about every day is like that for me. I am not married and my GF works so I pretty much do as I like. I seem to work harder now, but I enjoy it sooooo much more. Building furniture is a great hobby and I do a lot of custom work. I tell them when we make the deal.......don't call me, I'll call you. It works pretty well for me.

I just can't wait to get my knee taken care of and get me a sawmill!!!!

Steve

[Engineer]

It's a hobby until you stop liking it.  It's work when you stop liking it but you can't stop doing it because that's how you make your living or because it has to be done.   

I really don't consider sawmilling, chain saw work, or most yard work, "work".  It's only work when you have a deadline and you don't enjoy it.

[Frank_Pender]

You know, Deadwood, it is kind of like yesterday as well for me.  I have a number of such issues, often staring me in the face of reality.

Tuesday morning I had to be at a 4H camp just outside of Salem at 6:30 in the morning.  I had commited to help teach outdoor school of a half day Tuesday and all day Thursday.  The weather was going to be great, but I had lumber orders to produce and some other important "stuff" to do.  As a teacher for 30 years, it was not a have to job but a hobby for me.   A love to help children learn.  The same for the outdoor school. 

Now back to the falling, limbing, bucking and yarding; hobby or work?  Hobby!   The sawing of the logs is also a hobby.  I am diversified.   For me it is the "honeydooooo list, that is work, work, work.   I avoid those like the bird flu. :'(

[Part_Timer]

Most of my friends think it is to muck like work but I disagree

I have never described work like your description in the first paragraph.

It is a labor of love as far as I'm concerned.

[crtreedude]

I "work" 4 days a week in software and 2 days on Finca Leola business (plus mornings and evenings). Most of this is spent in my office which is half in and out of the jungle - FDH, you remember where you slept? That is my office now.

My favorite days are Friday and Saturday when I head down to the fincas to hang out. The first day is admiring everyone elses work - I am supposed to look at all the trees and make sure they are doing well and show my appreciation for the hard work. Sometimes I pick up a pruner or something and actually do something productive, but the last time I did that my shoulder didn't recover for 3 months! I am not as young as I was. So, I get on Toro and ride around the finca looking at things. Since the finca is about 167 acres, this takes some time. Sometimes we use the ATV instead of Toro if he has been working hard or another horse - we have 6 now.

Then, I go to the second finca, which is a little smaller - it is 70 acres. I spend the night and get up early and check out the river - AND THE FISH. It is a hard job, but someone has to do it... I have the camera with me to take nature shots for the website. During these two days I spend a lot of time speaking Spanish and learning how to confuse people.

Sunday I crash and doing a lot of reading and recovering from ant bites and physical exhaustion and reading myself for another week. For some reasons fire ants love me. Last weekend I sat on an anthill so I have several healing right now.  >:( I consider Sunday a day of rest because I usually don't have an option!

About half the weekends I will have a visitor, It doesn't change a lot, except I speak a lot more English.  :D

I don't have a honey-doo list - nope. I have made it abundantly clear I don't fix anything here - it is far too easy to hire people to do it. It makes my wife happy because she rarely has to wait for me to do anything - she just picks up the phone and calls the handyman. He makes about $2.00 USD per hour and has all the tools, etc.

[Rockn H]

Well, I work when I'm driving a truck.  When I have enough saw jobs lined up to keep me busy a while I feel like I'm on vacation.  Luckily I've been on vacation since July.  I did go to Beaumont for a couple weeks and did some camping, sawing, tree removal, after hurricane Rita.  Really enjoyed myself, and trying to go back.  Anyway, even though I get paid for sawing, it just doesn't feel like a job to me.  I leave the clocks in the truck.  I have to use'em to get their on time, because people are waiting on me.  I think of that though more like meeting somebody to go fishing than showing up for work.  We saw till we're hungry and then come back and saw some more.  The only time it feels like work is when I have customers showing up wondering when I'm going to be through with the six or seven customers in front of them so I can saw thier logs. :  That's when I start thinking it's going to be an extended vacation. ;D

[CHARLIE]

Tom used to be an executive for a company that did computer type work.  He put in many long hours. Now that was work for Tom.......but I have come to believe that, unlike me, Tom loves work.  Anyway, in 1990, Tom bought a bandsaw mill and started turning logs into boards.  He still worked long hours.....maybe even longer hours than before, but he loved working with wood and so it wasn't work to him.  In 1995, I went down to visit him for 3 days and helped him offbear the slabs and boards in 97° heat.  So there the two of us were. Tom was having fun and I was working. ;D  I got slap wore out and after 10 years I'm still not sure I've recovered. :D   

[breederman]

I went to a new doctor this summer when I had the "beaver fever" on of the questions on the new patiant form was"do you exersize reguarly?"I didn't know how to answer that so wrote"not in a gym"It made the doc laugh.

[Quartlow]

Running the mill
building stuff in the shop
Gardening
Yard work (huh in fact I need to plant those 50 new fall bulbs tomorrow if its nice)
Farm work, (helping out wifeys cousin)

None of this is work, to some it is. Like my wifes 16 year old nephew who can't keep up with me  ;D

Driving truck really isn't work for me either. Until it keeps me from home  :(

Working is getting up at some ungodly hour and and going in to the blacktopping comapny, Don't get me wrong. I like my boss and his Dad. Great people. And driving the truck is a breeze. But I was never one to stand around and watch so I end up shovleing black top running the wheelbarrow and riding herd on the young guys. now thats work!! Well almost  :D

[iain]

"Is this work or pleasurable hobby?"


Its both really but not a hobby

i'm back in the work shop (old one) making furniture
got more work stacked up than i can think about
and ALL of it is to be made how i want "as long as it looks good"


just got the non payers from summer to sort out and we're back at 70mph (thats 70 of the queens miles)


iain

      iain

[SAW MILLER]

  Every day this week,I have gotten up at 6:30 and headed to my saw job.I saw till 2:00 and head to the hospital for 8 hours of maintenance work.I get to bed at 12:30 and back up at 6:30 to do it again.If the sawmilling was "work" I couldn't make it out of bed but I always look forward to making sawdust.By the way,I recorded a gospel album and sang at hundreds of Church services in my spare time the last two years.And did I mention I raise hogs and corn too?Maybe I am a workaholic!!!!! Life is for LIVING ;D

[RSteiner]

Having wood stoves as our only means of heat for the last 31 means putting up about 8 cords of fire wood each year.  Coupled with supplying a few logs now and then to the Mobile Dimension mill keeps the chainsaw and tractor well exercised.

There are few things in life to compare to the crisp fall morning air, a cup of coffee, and the faint smell of diesel exhaust as you travel out in to the woods to gather one more load of fire wood.  Then, seeing and feeling the sun slowly rise spreading it's light on the fall colors all around and feeling its warmth on your back as you scope out the mornings work.

Once the trailer is full and the trip back to the house begins you know there is another hot cup of coffee waiting for you.  There is almost a cord of wood on the trailer behind which means you have picked up better than half a ton of wood, but it feels good to be alive.

Is it a lot of work, you bet.  Can it be called a hobby, if you want. 

It is a lifestyle some of us choose to live and one we find at times great pleasure in.  The instant gratification of seeing the trees which need harvesting turned into a fine pile of fire wood, or a pile of logs which will be turned into lumber is a great reward.

Take time to smell the sawdust along the path of life.

Randy

[crtreedude]

I always figure I can rest when I am dead. I want to cram as much life as I can into each day. Even though we have only been living here for 18 months (business for 3 1/2 years) it feels like a life time because each day is so full.

Rest - it is for the weak... ;-)

For me, doing something different is rest. I go until I drop - rest up, and go some more. Life is good.