Since I grew up in Phoenix, the Phoenix Suns have always been my favorite NBA team even though the last few years have not been very good.
I was reading where the new Suns coach told his star player, "Everything you want is on the other side of hard." I thought what a great quote. It applies to life in general, but has application for knifemakers especially those just starting out.
I have tried to help a lot of new knifemakers learn to grind, etc. I have noticed that some of them don't have the patience to learn. If it's not easy, they aren't willing to work at it.
"Everything you want is on the other side of hard."
So true Tom and also Hoss' quote. I've helped lots of folks with lots of different things not just knife making over the years. Some get it and some don't and the difference between the two seems to be how much try, want, drive, grit or determination a person has. A young lady, Emma, has been helping me some now and then in the shop. She's a very determined person. One day we were closing down. All my grinders are on an 8 foot bench that I wheel outside to grind on. With four grinders on it its a pretty substantial bench. It has to be pushed up a slightly sloping concrete drive back into the shop. She looks at the bench and says "I can't do that." So I got all Henry Ford on her, "If ya think ya can't or ya think ya can, either way your right." She promptly rolled that heavy bench uphill and into the shop. Last week she graduated high school a year early. This girl thinks she can, she's got stuff to do. She starts a course to become a certified welder soon. Then she wants to find an internship to be a horse trainer.
Little Suns trivia Tom. Winston Crite was my daughter Alyssa's, private skills/shooting coach from 8th grade through her senior year in high school. He worked with her weekly and sometime twice weekly for five years. It worked, she could play some Bball!
Talk about grit, determination or whatever you want to call it. Her goal was to play in college. She did, helping to win a championship, the best that school had done in the fifty years it had had a women's program. She played her senior year in high school and her freshman year in college with two herniated discs. She'd achieved her goal, she'd played in college so she quit playing Bball and moved on to becoming a nurse.
Coach Crite drilled her and drilled her on free throws. Payed off, she once made 24 free throws in one game! Far as anyone can figure this is the world record for a high schooler male or female. Interestingly its the one bball stat not captured, so no one knows for sure. An NBA player did make 27 one time.
My best friend when he was a kid, long before I knew him, was a huge Suns fan. He even named his dog Winston Barclay.
