Life Isn’t Cut Square—and That’s the Point
On curves, mistakes, second attempts, and learning to work with what shows up
There’s a certain kind of thinking that only happens when your hands are busy and your mind is free to wander. For me, it usually comes with sawdust in my hair—what’s left of it anyway—and the low, steady hum of a sander doing its quiet, repetitive work. That’s where Live Edge Lessons was born. Not at a desk. Not in a boardroom. But somewhere between the grain of a slab of wood and the realization that life, like wood, rarely comes perfectly straight.
I’ve always liked to work with my hands. Long before keyboards and conference calls, I was a tank driver—where attention, precision, and a healthy respect for things that can go sideways fast are not optional. Later, as a young man, I found myself in charge of irrigation on a cotton farm, learning quickly that nature does not care about your plans, your schedules, or your confidence. You adapt or you lose the crop. Period.
That theme followed me into entrepreneurship. When I started my first company, Colorations, I wasn’t just “the founder.” I was down on the floor making 500-gallon vats of children’s paint—mixing, lifting, fixing mistakes, and starting over when something didn’t quite work. There’s a special humility that comes from scrubbing pigment off concrete at midnight and realizing tomorrow you’ll do it all again, hopefully a little smarter.
Much later, I discovered wood.
At first, it was modest—refinishing old tables, desks, and forgotten antiques. There’s something deeply satisfying about taking an object that’s been used, scarred, and neglected, and giving it another life. But then I stumbled into live edge wood, and everything changed. The knots. The curves. The cracks that refuse to be hidden. The insistence that the material itself has a say in the final outcome.
That discovery led to Hill Country Wood (www.hillcountrywood.com), where I design and build one-of-a-kind pieces that honor the natural shape of the tree rather than forcing it into submission. As I’ve written before in my post “Wood, Mindfulness, and the Zen of Sanding,” sanding isn’t about rushing to the finish—it’s about paying attention. You slow down. You listen. You let the wood tell you what it needs next. The irony is that the more patient you are, the better—and faster—the final result tends to be.
Life works the same way.
Life is full of live edges. It curves when we expect straight lines. It knots up where we thought things would be smooth. It cracks, warps, and sometimes refuses to cooperate entirely. We can fight that reality, or we can learn to work with it. This publication is about those moments—when adapting matters more than controlling, and when learning how to respond is far more valuable than insisting on being right.
Live Edge Lessons is for both women and men, across all ages, though the sweet spot is probably somewhere between 25 and 55—when ambition is still burning, experience is starting to speak up, and the gap between expectation and reality becomes impossible to ignore.
There’s a quiet positivity that comes from accepting the live edges of life. Not settling. Not giving up. But recognizing that perfection was never the point. Progress was. Meaning was. Growth was.
And yes—it’s okay to fail. In the shop, I redo things all the time. Second tries. Third tries. Occasionally fourth tries that involve muttering under my breath and more sanding than originally planned. Failure isn’t a verdict; it’s feedback. As the writer Samuel Beckett put it, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Wood understands this. So should we.
Or as Anne Lamott wisely said, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes… including you.” Sometimes that unplugging happens with a piece of sandpaper in your hand.
For more essays from Live Edge Lessons