The Last Commission

Back when I was teaching English, I made my wife a desk. By my current standards, it wasn't anything special, but it came out pretty and flat and that's all you need in a desk. 

I used to have a dream about this desk. 

It went like this: one of my colleagues would come into the living room where the desk sat and say "Gosh, what a lovely desk. Where did you get it?"

And I, all puffed up with false modesty, would say "Oh, I made that."

"You MADE that?" They would say, hardly believing it. Then there would be a pause and they would say, "You know, my husband needs a desk for our spare room. Do you think you could make another one?"

I would pause. 

"Well, sure. But I spent a fair bit on the materials, so I would need to charge you. Do you think $300 would be okay?"

And they would agree and I would build and deliver the desk. And on that day, I would be a REAL woodworker, because I would have been paid for my work. More commissions would follow. Who knew where it would end? Maybe a whole new career? 

I literally sat at my desk and dreamed this impossible dream over and over again while I was supposed to be grading papers. It was intoxicating. 

Fast forward a few years. I've made dozens of client pieces and I charge a lot more than $300. I've been paid very well for some of the things I've made. 

And I hate it. 

I absolutely loathe commission work. Sometimes it's the clients. Some of them are jerks, but they're mostly kind and reasonable people. The real problem is the pressure. It's so easy to mess up an estimate or ruin an expensive piece of material and watch your profit go spiraling down the drain. Then there's the press of deadlines and the crushing pressure of installations, where I have to place and assemble a complex piece of work, generally by myself, often without all the tools I need, and frequently with the client watching. A big installation will keep me up at night for a week before I do it. 

And you know what? It's not the work; it's me.  I put 90% of this pressure on myself.  

I have an anxiety disorder. I don't mind telling people. I'm no more ashamed of it than I would be ashamed to have diabetes. My brain just makes too much of whatever chemical makes people panic. 

And I'm lucky that my anxiety is pretty moderate. I know people who are crippled by towering, unnameable fears invented by their own traitorous brains. I'm not like that at all. I can always function. And I used to be an actor, so you can rarely tell that I'm in the midst of an utter freak-out about half the time. 

My own mind makes the pressures of client work too much to bear. Some people can handle it, but it's often more than I can take. 

Several months ago, I wrote a post where I declared myself done with client work. I was a bit optimistic. I needed the money too badly to give it up. But as you all know, my little media business has been going very nicely. The money has been getting better and better and unlike the feast and famine of client work, it's steady. In just the last few months, I've started making the kind of money that made commissions a luxury. 

So yesterday, I delivered my last piece. 

It's really very nice (if I can say that about my own work). It's a 5-foot sign for a very popular local coffee chain. I'll do a video in the future, but here are some pictures for now. 

This is the way I want to exit the business; with a clean and lovely piece of creative fabrication that will sit in a public space for years. I didn't design it, but there aren't too many other people who could have built it. The client was delighted. I got a nice check. 

And now, I've got videos to make and books to write, and who even knows what else. It's work that makes me happy and hardly makes me anxious at all. 

Custom clients of Cleveland, Ohio; Rex Krueger has left the building.