Setting The Scene

The inside of the wattle and daub hut is as clean as a dirt-floored Medieval hut could be. The walls are whitewashed, the rough table is clean, the floor is covered in fresh rushes.

I sit on a rough wooden box in the middle of the floor, next to the embers of the firepit, staring at my hands as the first rays of dawn creep around the window frame.

For as long as I could remember, I’ve worked iron in a forge. My hands are powerful and calloused, scarred with innumerable battles with searing heat and hard metal.

I stare at these meaty instruments of creation and imagine where all I have brought into being might be. Things that have caused death and suffering. Things that have lifted the soil so that life may grow. Things that opened frontiers and experiences of distant lands.

And I wonder if any of it had meaning.

The morning sun breaks over the horizon, flooding the lone door opening of the little hut with its warm touch. The light caresses my hands, I imagine I can feel them glowing with the power of true Creation, and I smile.

Outside, the familiar sound of hooves on the road warns me of visitors. Leaning down to go out my little door, I see the lords of the manor have ridden up on the steeds I had shoed for them for more than a decade, wearing the swords I also had forged.

The first among them raises a hand in greeting, “We have sold our lands to another set of lords and they have deemed thy smithy is no longer of value. Here’s a small purse of coins for your troubles.” They laughed with each other as they rode off to adventures in distant lands.

To be fair, I can’t blame them. They got a good price for the land.

I stood there staring at the bag of coins, every emotion playing through my mind. Anger burned first, the bitter taste of humiliation making it hiss and steam, before ending with the cold, hard edge of disappointment. I’d been tossed aside after more than a decade of hard work, with just a bag of coins as thanks.

And that’s how it goes.

When things change outside of your control, you can waste time lamenting it, or you can accept it, put your hammer in a bag, and get started down the road, looking for the next opportunity.

But as I started to walk, I had several realizations.

As I passed by the bridge for which I had spent months making the nails that held it together, I remembered that time with a sense of pride. Putting my head down and hammering until my fingers were numb. It was intoxicating.

I realized something as I passed by the loaded carts lined up to cross over it. I may have designed that bridge and led the crew that built it, but I also wasn’t in the group planning who used the bridge, or why they should do it.

That’s why I was the one walking away and not amongst the traffic on it.

I spent the next few miles of my walk wondering why that was, not liking the truth in the answers. Admitting it to myself, being an introvert meant I didn’t feel comfortable pushing myself into the spotlight. When you are always in shadow, though, no one can see your value. As a result, the new lords weighed what they knew of me, and I went from being an invisible builder to an unnecessary expense in one flick of the quill.

The hut I left behind was comfortable and safe. Now I was on my own, on the road, looking toward a life of unknowns, of insecurities, of uncomfortable reality.

What do you do when you’re uncomfortable? You either fall back on the things that make you comfortable, or you make what’s uncomfortable comfortable.

I hoisted my hammer and I did both.

The Origins of My Startup

Looking out the window at the mud road that runs past my new hut, I smile to myself. The land on which the hut is built is mine. I no longer work for another lord. Mine is the only will that is exercised here. To get here, though, the road went through many twists and valleys, and potholes on a journey that started three years ago.

I had found myself on an endless road where I thought I could not use my skills to change where I was. I wished as I walked that there was a way to apply heat to soften a road and hammer it into a new direction, but I didn’t know what that direction might be.

Thirty years of skills don’t go away. Being a smith means more than just wielding a hammer. It takes the ability to see the direction the metal needs to be pushed to take shape, identifying flaws before they become a problem, and knowing how to use the material’s own strengths to best suit its final application. Those are skills that come naturally to me. They felt useless as I had stared down that road.

My first inclination was to find a spot and start building a forge. What stopped me was a memory from my apprentice days. Before I learned to visualize an end product, I did what all new apprentices do — I heated metal white-hot and threw my strength into the hammer, trying to force my will onto it. That approach was a waste of sweat and steel.

No, building a forge would happen later. First, I needed to do what I always did with everything I made. I started by visualizing what the end result would look like.

The only problem was, I wasn’t sure what that would be. So I began to wander to find out.

I tripped and stumbled on that road often over the next three years. I also had some amazing experiences that taught me a lot about myself. A year ago, weary from the aimless travels, I stopped at a place I could call my own and began to work. I would work at my forge all day making the most amazing, whimsical items, none of which turned out to be easy to eat.

It’s not like I didn’t know this. I’m stubborn, not stupid. I had fallen back into what made me comfortable now that I had decided to commit to a location. I enjoyed using my craft to create, and I’m proud of what I’ve made.

But craft isn’t enough. I’ve given myself time to build trust in my ability to do what I want, now I have to take the next step and grow into areas I’m not as familiar with, that I ignored throughout my career because they didn’t fit with what I thought I wanted to do.

I look from that road that I’ve abandoned to my own forge, one I’ve made the way I want it to be. Beside it lies a sign I created for this day, one which I will spend time this morning hanging over my door.

I am going to show people that this stack of hand-forged metal has value — and surprises. These things were the result of someone’s love of creating a unique experience with hidden secrets and twists by design. Sure they are just inanimate objects. There are lots of smiths out there making things, too. Mine speak uniquely of my long experience, with considerations and perspectives no one else might have.

I pick up the sign and take it outside with my ladder. Today I am hanging it up.

Yes, there is still that part of me that wants to shrink back into the shadows and quietly work away unnoticed, but I’ve already grown past that version of myself.

“Average Joe Hero” the sign cleanly states. “Games by design.”

As I dust off my worn old hands, I smile. Thirty years of burns and scars and calluses have made these hands what they are today. The work done with them was always good. What was always missing was you.

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