5 years from today. 2024. I’ll be 45. A day in the life of me, imagined. A writing exercise in daydreaming about the future, as if I was writing it in the present.

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It’s been 5 years since I started learning kintsugi. Since that fateful trip, I’d continued on practising on my own. But one needs to constantly level up and grow, in order to produce things that most aligns to your taste. I love these lines by Ira Glass, about the gap between your taste and your skill:

Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?

A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit……And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work……Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap.

So it is to close this gap that made me continue to come to Kyoto, to always be growing in my skill as a kintsugi craftsman. There’s always new things to learn. What new materials to use, where the best lacquer can be sourced, how to make your own tools…so many. And skill is something that is hard to grow in unless you are able to bounce it off fellow practitioners. A certain way of holding the brush, little handy hacks to get the lacquer to dry evenly, or to get the perfect smooth polish of gold. There’s a limit to how much you can learn those on your own, so being with the help of master shokunin.

So every time we stop by here, I go on an apprenticeship. It’s difficult learning from the pros when you don’t speak Japanese, so I’d been taking courses to brush up on that. I managed to convert the study room in our machiya house into a studio - lots of air and light coming in from the floor-to-ceiling balcony doors. I close the door, play some soft music, and I enter a different world.

A world where I get absorbed into the task at hand. Working with my hands is wonderful. My hands are like a bridge, a portal, to a place that quiet, gentle and just flows. I flow with my tool, with the action before me, and become one with it. It feels a bit like mindfulness integrated into kintsugi. Almost. And to slowly see a broken bowl come together, is the best. As much as I love working on my digital products, the effects are somewhat abstract and intangible. It is, after all, digital. But with kintsugi, I finally have something tangible to touch, see, smell, and feel at the end. 

Interestingly, not much kintsugi pieces are sold on the internet. People get them repaired to personal keepsake, not to sell. But with a niche but viable market, I am slowly selling my pieces on Etsy. Friends are also asking me to repair their pieces. It’s not much in terms of income, but it’s a source of great joy. 

Could it become my next career move? Should it? Hobbies don’t have to be monetised for it to exist and continue being of value. For now, this hobby had given me a new sense of life. And that’s enough.