FIELD NOTE NO. 025.Anybody else have chore clothes?
Jeans with holes. Sweatshirts with mysterious stains. The clothes your wife looks at you in disgust for coming downstairs in.
Apparently perfect for operating a chainsaw. Eventually they become oil change rags.
Three lives. One shirt. Not bad.
There’s something peculiar about the work we choose to do ourselves. Pack trailer bearings. Sharpen knives. Split firewood. Grow vegetables. All things we could pay somebody else to do.
Consider a trailer bearing. Steel rollers, grease, a seal. A cheap arrangement entrusted with several thousand dollars of boat. Regularly dunked in water. Brilliant.
Neglect it and you’re beside a smoking wheel, mentally cycling through every curse word you’ve learned since childhood.
Fishing is no longer on the agenda.
Cherry and maple pop apart with a satisfying crack. Frozen maple in January? Beautiful. Elm would rather die twice. Its stringy fibers refuse to surrender.
Oak? Put on your big girl britches.
Field dressing a deer near zero with a dull knife? Sharpen the damn knife.
A buck catches your scent and leaves your shooting lane. One noseful. Gone.
Laundry was an afterthought. Now it’s a bad memory.
Gardening is another questionable financial decision. Buy lumber, compost, fencing, seeds. Negotiate with rabbits. Lose arguments to insects.
Congratulations. You’ve grown a $17 tomato.
And somehow you’re planning next year’s garden.
Split wood for camping? Recreation.
Split wood to heat the house? Chore.
Restore a truck? Hobby.
Change its oil? Chore.
Same hands. Same tools. Different label.
Some chores are just chores. Nobody needs spiritual fulfillment cleaning a toilet.
But we’ve gotten comfortable paying to eliminate inconvenience.
Faster. Easier. Delivered. Installed. Serviced.
Then spend our weekends looking for something meaningful to do with our hands.
So why aren’t chores passions?
— Esker