There was recently a thread in which a member was questioned on their intentions. This has been stuck in my head for a couple days now, so I thought I would share my experience with coming into penmanship and how it has changed me. My reason and hope for posting this is to maybe clear some normal world misconceptions of people to those new to the world of calligraphy. This will probably be a long drawn out story so bear with me.
Some Background on Me - I am 41 years old and from Indianapolis, IN. I am not the "norm" when it comes to thoughts, beliefs and the way the majority of the world works. I have worked all my life, I started at 8 by working in my grandfathers auto repair shop and worked every single school break, after school and vacation until I was 20. After that I went on to a couple different careers. I experienced the crazy busy workaholic life of traveling the country in a corporate world of a National Director position. I then opened my own music store and was open for several years until finding out my wife was pregnant with my now almost 5 year old son. When we found out we were having a kid we both decided it would be best for one of us to stay home with him and raise him instead of chucking him off to a babysitter for the majority of his waking hours. Because she had insurance and benefits it made more sense for me to close the store and stay home with the kids. A HUGE lifestyle change but in the end, so worth it. Income change was dramatic as well as the fact I had always worked liked 15 hours or more per day and then just starting to stay home was dramatic for me.
Pre-Calligraphy Perspective - I was raised primarily by my grandparents, as my mother always was working and father wasn't around. My grandparents "old school" beliefs were instilled in me and I credit them for who I am today. One of the largest shocks in going from their beliefs where the world operates on a handshake, everyone works hard for what they do, people are to be trusted and no one is out to do harm, was a rude awakening when I hit the real world. A large majority of the people in the modern world think they are "owed something" in my opinion. They think they need to make a huge salary, own the best home and car, and be successful with little or no work. They look for ways to sue anyone they can to accumulate more money they don't deserve. They expect everyone else to raise their children (schools, babysitters, TV, Computer, etc) and take no responsibility for them self or the problems the children develop, blaming it on anyone but them self and then suing whoever they can to "financially compensate" them for the heartache and distress. This is in fact how a large portion of the world is and what it has become. I had given up on people in general and most of my time was spent with family and a very few, select personal friends. A common thing I said was "I seriously hate 99.9% of people in the world" and chose to live my life and ignore the rest of the world except my very small group of intimate friends and family. I always lived in a small home most around 750 sq f, when the average home size where I live is 2500+ square feet. I've never had a new car and paid cash for everything in life. As my grandfather told me "If you have to finance anything other than a home in life, you're living too high on the hog"
Post Calligraphy Perspective - In the summer of 2012 I agreed to purchase our family ancestral home, land has been in my family since the 1830's and has always remained in the direct family, from my mother. It was getting to be too much work to take care of the home and grounds for her and she wanted to move to Daytona Beach. One of the tasks in her moving was to go through the family archive room or as we called it "The Little Room". This is a 8x12 room with 11ft ceilings full of well organized boxes of the family history and artifacts. In one of these boxes I discovered a bounty of Penmanship materials, examples and supplies from my Great Great Grandfather. I had NOO idea he was a penman, taught penmanship or anything related to it. After looking at the amazing penmanship from him and his colleagues I decided I wanted to learn to write like that!!! I sought out a local teacher and signed up for the first class in October of 2012 and have been hooked and absorbed since.
One of the things I did not expect to find in pursuing Penmanship, was a group of people who were genuine, courteous, and had many of my similar values and beliefs I was raised with. I was in awe.....you do something for someone you don't know and they take a huge chunk of their time to create a beautiful thank you!!! What the hell?!?!, people like this really still exist?!?!?!In a world where most people move at such a pace that taking a couple seconds to text you a message like "thnks 4 the hlp!" is considered the norm...(My help wasn't even worth a second to put the letter A in the word thanks?) The calligraphy world is full of people who value the time & effort people put into something as simple as handwriting and all the time not expecting anything in return. This is how it is for 99.9% of the community. There is always a bad apple in every crowd, but very few in this community. In my limited time in this world I have interacted with hundreds of calligraphers due to my making pens, from beginners which haven't ever even held a dip pen to Professional Calligraphers who address envelopes in the White House. One constant is they are all genuine and caring people and not the "norm" you find in the everyday world. Out of the hundreds of interactions I have had I can only recall two occurrences of individuals being devious, deceptive or the general type of "a&%-hole" you find in the modern world.
I still think a majority of the world are greedy, no-good, so and so's but the calligraphy world is not part of that group. I love my simpler life, where things move slower (you get more done in life by slowing down by making less mistakes!!), we make our own bread, we grow our own food, we sold the dishwasher and wash dishes by hand, we do work on our home ourselves, etc. I can't go out and buy the newest a coolest most expensive electronic toy at the drop of a hat like we used to when I owned my own business, but I wouldn't change a thing for anything in the world. Time and loved ones is all we have in this world and wasting it on material things is the biggest waste. I haven't always thought this but our choice to "downsize" our life was the best decision we could have ever made.
I am sure as those who are new or who may doubt the sincerity of others in this community will learn in time, but I encourage you to open your mind and heart to allowing the generous people of this community in, you will be surprised in what you find just as I have learned over the past couple years. Sorry to go on and on but I wanted to share my opinions and thoughts to those which may doubt sincerity in this community. (Jumping off my soapbox) (I do tend to do that alot around here, lol)
