Stoke! Patience and Observation

So I finally have four consecutive days off of work and what do I do? Drive out to the middle of nowhere, sleep on the ground, eat random stuff, and throw wood into a hole.

Well, it was nice to get away. And pretty normal. And amazing in its own quiet way.

On Sunday afternoon I couldn't help but comment, It amazes me that yesterday morning I shoveled embers from Friday's campfire onto a little pile of sticks and grass, and that has turned into this - a 2000 plus degree fire. I mean, it took hours, and I watched it happen, helped it happen, and still, there's something amazing about it.

As my generalized and literal description implies, there wasn't much going on. Once the fire was burning, somebody would be on duty to stoke - add fuel - and they'd sit near the kiln, check a few minutes after the last stoke, gauge the time until the next, check again, check again, stoke. Each cycle takes from 7-20 minutes, depending where we are in the firing. There's an art to patience, which is most of the game. The kilnmaster's done nearly a hundred firings in different kilns, and he's got this one dialed. I manage to ask the right questions, learn what queues him to act or wait, get into the rhythm myself. I peek in the door, he calls "how does it look?" and I respond, "about five minutes". It's been awhile since the last stoke, so he checks for himself. I feel good when he straightens up, saying, "you're right, five minutes". Throwing wood so that it hits the back of the kiln is harder than it looks.

So, yes. Lots of sitting around and doing nothing. Not even thinking. Very relaxing.

Some insight, though not too mystically gained: I learned about a personality test called the Personality Index. It measures one's levels of leadership (v. following), extroversion (v. introversion), patience (v. impatience), and detail-orientedness (v. big-pictured-ness). It also measures flexibility - one's ability to operate outside of their natural temperament and for how long - and happiness, which is the degree to which day-to-day life falls within one's natural methods. It seems really intelligent and useful, as things go, and even learning about the test gave me a lot of insight. Me? Probably patient, a leader, detail oriented, and introverted. The last months of tiredness, for example - part of it is caused by work taking more time than usual (and consequently other things getting less). Maybe in part by not having enough variety in my work. The last couple of weeks have been exhausting - so I would conclude that I've been doing things that aren't the norm for me - and that's true - and they've been wiping me out. Making adjustments to life is hard, and takes a lot of push-comes-to-shove, but it's worthwhile.