Is it time to start taking it easy?

It is really nice to see that competitors lend so much support to each other. The ukulele community, for the most part, seems to be an exceptional bunch. I hope that Ken continues building for many years to come.

Just today, I won the auction for the Style 1, Soprano on ebay. It will have a prominent place in my little collection and I am quite sure that it will be played and loved often. Thank you to Ken and Mrs. Timms for keeping the craft alive. Best of luck to Ken either way.

I'm not sure the Lounge is about competition as much as it is about a community. This is a builders forum and not a sellers forum. Building great looking and great sounding ukuleles is hard work. It is not about competition but more about shared pain. Blood, sweat and tears (minus the blood).

Timbuck said:

Yup! I'm relaxing now..Just opened a bottle of " Yellowtail Shiraz " 14% no less..Nice little wine from OZ , and I'm watching NICS on the box.

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Listen, Mr. Timms, if you want to sit around getting drunk off ripple and watching Nickelodeon channel until the cows come home, you just go right ahead. More power to you, sir.

Never forget one thing. You, me, the others replying to this thread, Sophia Loren, every kid in the town grade school, every newborn baby at the local hospital, we all share one thing: at the end of each day, we are exactly one day older.

As Carrie "Princess Lea" Fisher wrote on her Twitter recently when the young Twitterers were roasting her for becoming old and fat in the latest Star Wars: "I'm sorry to inform you that youth is not a talent. We've all been there. One day you will be here" (Or something to that effect; You go, Carrie!).

Rock on, Timbuck.

Anyone who has a Ken Timms ukulele is forever a winner.

Titchtheclown said:

Anyone who has a Ken Timms ukulele is forever a winner.

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Yes, indeedy.

Interesting how many older folks are here on the UU luthier’s forum. Our lives started out in world where you could touch, smell and experience things first hand--there were no computers, or virtual reality games, or gadgets like cell phones to cloud ones senses. Making things by hand keeps you in touch with a truer reality that’s increasingly missing in today’s world. It makes you realize that runaway technology isn’t an end-all, and that a slower more direct association with the world is much more rewarding. It really does beat watching TV, even when you screw up.

I outgrew my home shop some years ago. An old piano repair space came available nearby and I moved in. The plan was to build ukuleles, pedal boards, and the occasional speaker box for the guitar store next door. The ukulele construction process came fairly quick and had just gotten to the refinement stage. A marketing plan was in the works. Then people found out I could fix old furniture and make custom bookcases. The ukulele parts cabinet hasn't been opened since. Hard to turn away paying customers.

Last year the cancer bug found me (age 56). Targeted radiation over 3 months got rid of it. Throughout, I made myself go the shop every day. Even if I could only stay for an hour or so, I needed a place to go and focus on something besides getting through the day.

Point is: we all need some sort of escape. Even if the escape masquerades as real life.
Point 2: be careful about the things you get good at. People will expect you to keep doing it.