Swing & Whittle is the name of my small but mighty workshop where I make wonderful things out of wood entirely by hand (I.e. no power tools, my shop uses electricity for the two lights above my bench, nothing else). Swing & Whittle is also a philosophy of life seeking the most simple, natural, meaningful ways to do things. It is something I stumbled into accidentally on purpose and has led to a lot of change in the way I live life on a daily basis. These are some of the things I write about, but the basic premise here is writing about life.
Who am I?
Well, if you must know :-) My name is Aaron Aiken. I live outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA, in a small ranch home on approximately .75 acres. Corporate consulting gig, house, two cars, wife, kid, dog. American dream and suchhhhh….eh….we’ll get into that later. But no, actually, unraveling portions of that dream has become a focus. Like I mentioned above, I stumbled into this accidentally on purpose. I have wanted to escape the confines of the corporate job/life since I “entered the workforce” back in 2005 I just never knew who/what/where/when/why/how. It was just a thing I wanted to do, but a thing that had no after. No meat. No purpose other than raging against the machine. All of that said, I have nothing against my job, the people I work with and for, and so on. It is me, not them. You get the gist.
So, fifteen years later, I have figured out parts of who/what/where/when/why/how regarding work, money, life, “purpose”, family, and, in general, life. And to make this extremely cheesy, it starts with an axe and knife. Well, it starts a bit before then, but we’ll get into that later. An axe and knife are the two most simplistic tools that I use in my shop. They are the most simplistic but also the most useful.
Anyways, before I ramble on too much and scare you away. Thanks for stopping by. I hope some of what I wrote above piques your interest. If so, make sure you sign up to read my newsletter as I continue to figure things out. My aim to to help you if you need help, or just make you laugh if that’s what you need (although I don’t find myself too funny, but maybe just laugh at me and that’ll help). If you don’t have any interest in this, I don’t expect you to sign up, but maybe you’d like to buy a wooden toy?
Cheers,
Aaron Aiken
