![]() ![]() We were in our thirties, young, but not so young. We knew we were fortunate to have good jobs-and this was well before our country was facing a pandemic and massive unemployment-but we were facing the existential crisis that comes from spending your days doing something you don’t enjoy and wondering if this is how the next five, ten, 20 years will play out. We were overwhelmed by the uniformity of it all and troubled that we seemed incapable of finding contentment in jobs that many of our coworkers appeared to cherish. Sometimes we hoped for an excuse to quit-a blowup after a failed project or an absurd request from a boss. But we were deskbound and felt caged by the typing, phone calls, Slack chats, and emails, all performed under the hum of fluorescent lights. We were lucky enough to have good bosses and colleagues who had become friends. A few months earlier, Pat and I had what were arguably good careers: I was a reporter at a national magazine in San Francisco, and Pat was a copywriter at a tech company in Seattle. In reality, the whole project was borne out of frustration. They’d just keep flying, the wood breaking down over time and separating into smaller and smaller pieces until they vanished, as our brains exploded from frustration and worry. ![]() Constructing a cabin was a task that one might say we were “not entirely prepared for.” Sometimes, during those months of toil, our anger burned so intensely that we thought the boards we threw into the woods might never land. We screwed up countless times from morning to evening, wasting precious daylight hours. The sawdust still airborne, Pat reached down, grabbed a two-by-four with the conviction of a Baptist preacher, and sent it flying into the forest with a short, crisp, “ Fuck.”Ī lot more lumber would end up in the woods. When the whir of the blade stopped, it became immediately clear that he had cut it wrong. It was the summer of 2018, in the middle of Washington’s emerald-soaked Cascade Range, and I was on the phone with my father, seeking advice about some framing conundrum, while my longtime friend Patrick (who goes by Pat) was wrestling a 16-foot board toward a miter saw. I know it's not an easy task but if you take a look at the video, you'll probably think you can do it too.We were two or three weeks into building a cabin when the first two-by-four became the target of a sudden, white-hot flash of anger. He showed almost every step and made me think I could do it. Dave spent a few days on a piece of property he owns and he builds a cabin from start to finish. The internet is a great (and sometimes not great) resource for finding information and ideas for helping you with a project. The internet rabbit hole that I ventured down lead me to a guy named Dave Whipple and his Bushradical YouTube channel. I'm sure I know enough people that would like to use of a cabin in Wyoming and would lend a hand to get it built. Only a couple things are stopping me. Once I discovered land that I thought was perfect, I started going further down the rabbit hole and looking at how to build a cabin. I started looking (more like dreaming) at property where I could get out, spend time in nature and have an easy place to get away from time to time. In reality, it seems much easier that it would be, but it would be fun. I come from a long line of project builders, my grandpa's built homes and barns, my dad has finished basements and built barns, I think I could do it. Does it seem like a project that you're ready to tackle? I always think projects like this would be simple. ![]()
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