Hump Day

Kale Vogt
March 11, 2025

Today, for the first time ever, I drove Catbus outside of the slow and safe streets of Covington. And I survived.

Okay maybe that’s dramatic, but for a millennial never acquired the desire to learn how to drive stick shift, this was quite the feat.

Let the record show that if I didn’t have to take Catbus for this errand, I wouldn’t have. The 4x8 sheets of underlayment I was picking up, however, wouldn’t fit in my small hatchback.

I may have stalled out at a red light. Twice. And perhaps once I had to quickly veer off the road into a gas station parking lot due to putting the vehicle in the wrong gear.

But at the end of the day, I did it. I got over “the hump.”

“The hump” I’m referring to is, of course, the learning curve that comes with any acquired skill. And with all the lessons I’ve been exposed to this past year, one could say I’m rich in “humps.” I’ve become conditioned to being a novice.

However, having been immersed in the world of woodworking for a year now, I’m beginning to notice the fruits of my labor. They may be tiny, baby fruits – but fruits nonetheless.

Most of these fruits come in the form of efficiency and speed. Like how my latest chair was my fastest chair build to date. Or how assisting students in classes has become more intuitive and fluid.

Other fruits come in the form of mental ease. I don’t worry or obsess over woodworking mistakes like I used to. I know how to hide mistakes more creatively now, and I know there will always be another build to improve on.

Yet, even with enough humps to fill all my pant pockets, there are still more to overcome. The one that’s been lingering on my mind the most as of late is demonstrating how to saddle a seat by hand at the upcoming Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event in Portland, Oregon.

I have zero experience demonstrating. Frankly, I’ve questioned where the hell my courage came from to agree to this.

While Lie-Nielsen was here this past weekend, to ease my fear, I made sure to take note of what the demonstrators were doing and saying. I listened in on how they described certain techniques, and how they interacted with onlookers.

After observing off and on throughout the day, I began to feel relief. “Chat with people all day about woodworking?” I thought to myself, “Hmm, maybe this won’t be as scary as I think it’ll be.”

So where did I find the courage to agree to this? Maybe I’m so used to doing things out of my comfort zone that adding one more thing to that list isn’t as daunting as it once was. And maybe that’s the point.

So, why the two sheets of 4x8 underlayment? Crate material, of course.