The long answer: I used to work in marketing. Like lots of marketing people, my job was to create landfill. I created a LOT of landfill. But I still wasn’t happy. I wanted to do something that mattered. To me.

One day I was riding my bike on a trail past a big pile of old boards that – decades earlier – had been a farmhouse. I stopped and looked around. The boards were beat to hell from a lifetime out there in that field:

I went back later and hauled a bunch of them home. I cut them up with an old handsaw, nailed them together, and sanded out most of the sharp edges. When I was done, I stood back and looked at the bookshelves that had been – in their earlier life - the floorboards of someone’s home.

It felt good to rescue the boards. It felt good to make something useful from them. It felt good that it was something I thought was beautiful. Looking at those shelves that night I finished building them, I was happier than I had been in years. No kidding: years.