What this blog is about

After graduating from college in 2007, I had a miserable time. I was left with a stellar education in economics without a passion to apply it to. I worked for two years at a consulting company. The salary was good, but the work was paradoxically mind numbingly boring and stroke inducingly stressful. I sat around wondering if my life was simply going to be sitting in an office working on spreadsheets at all hours of the day while occasionally solving a business problem that captured an extra 1% of a billion dollar market for a client. I couldn't have cared less, but I was also stuck.

After two years, I thought maybe I would give graduate school a try. I worked at a cognitive psychology lab for two years surrounded by kind, generous, and interesting people. I ran experiments and read academic papers. I sat in on seminars and lab meetings. I became quite fascinated and proficient in the science of decision making and negotiation. I was even lucky enough to be a teaching assistant for a couple of classes. Still, I knew that the academic lifestyle wasn't for me. The work that academics do is often highly important, but for me, it lacked a certain practicality. The results that our lab created were not something that I could hold in my hand.

After two more years, I took an opportunity that had been staring me in the face for a while. A little over 50 years ago, my grandfather started a small machine tool shop in Iwata, Japan. My mother had been running it for about 20 years but she wanted to retire. I had nothing to lose and thought, why not? I'd always been interested in entrepreneurship and working at this factory would be a gentle introduction where I wouldn't have to worry about start-up capital or finding new business immediately.

For the first year, I worked exclusively inside the factory. I learned to operate a manual lathe, a drill press, a manual milling machine, a cylindrical grinder, and a surface grinder. I'm by no means an expert but I understand what goes into it. After a year, I moved into management where my family has given me basically free reign to implement ideas.

It's been a year and a half since I started at the factory, and now I'm completely hooked. I love the process of production. I love making stuff. I love the technology of manufacturing. I love reading blue prints. What a difference time makes. Where once I was depressed and without passion, now I'm brimming with enthusiasm. Where I once dragged myself out of bed every morning, I now wake up excited for the day ahead.

I love making stuff so much that I've recently decided to take it up as a personal hobby as well, with the hope that someday my personal hobby and my professional job will merge into one. I'm creating this blog to document this process. As I have mentioned I have a year of experience working with metals, but I have no experience with electronics, and have only recently dipped my toes into the world of CAD. I hope that over the years, this blog will serve as a record of my progress as well as help to anyone who might be interested in taking their ideas and turning them into objects.

I know that this is a first post and that no one will read it, but I also know that it's important to define a mission and stick to it. This is what I have for now:

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