Over the past week or so, I’ve been out in the shop, trying to get it back together. I haven’t had time to do much woodworking in quite some time and now, I want to. That’s meant sweeping up, tuning machines and deciding what I want to do.

Yet today, I realized something. I really have no reason to do anything. That’s kind of a disturbing thought.

I’ve made just about everything I ever want to make around the house. There are one or two exceptions, I’m still half-way through a major remodel of our DVD/Bluray storage. When we bought the house, there was an alcove that we think they had their TV in, but it’s right in the path from the front door, so anyone watching TV is going to have people walking back and forth in front of it. It’s a great place to put pull-out rolling storage though. Otherwise… I’ve done what I want to do. Well, there are some built-ins that I always wanted to make so that our “library” can hold more books, I can always do that, but other than those two things, I’m done.

I’ve really run out of people to make things for. Most of my family and a fair number of my friends are dead. My wife and I were talking about how few Christmas cards we’re going to send out this year, a grand total of 6 and 2 of those are to our kids.

In the past, I might make things for friends and family members for Christmas and birthdays, but over the last year or two, I’ve gotten a lot of those things back, as those people are gone now. Making anything for anyone except my wife, that seems unlikely moving forward. I have no interest in making things to sell, and never have, which really leaves me pondering, what’s next? What’s the point? What am I going to do with my shop now?

I still love getting out there, although I just haven’t had the time in a while, which explains the extreme amount of cleanup I’m having to do, but I can look at the tools and want to get to work, I just don’t know what to accomplish.

I can just wander around the house and try to find projects, but most things seem unnecessary. Once upon a time, I was going to build a new dining room table that converted into a game table, but now that my kids are both gone and living on the other side of the country, my wife and I don’t sit down and play a lot of games anymore. I have a number of shop projects that I need to do, including a new clamp rack because the old one came crashing down about a month ago, but that’s something I can do in an afternoon and then, I’ll be out of projects again.

I know I could just hop on the lathe, once I get that cleaned off, and do some art projects, but I always looked at people who made tons of tchotchkes or turned pens or something, complaining that they had them coming out of their ears because nobody wants them. Just how many pens can you possibly use in a lifetime? How many vases or plates can you conceivably have?

What can I build that is actually necessary and not just busy work? This is something that I’m going to have to think long and hard about. I don’t want to think that my shop is no longer necessary, but I need it to have purpose too. Right now, I have no good ideas. How about you?