Crowbar.

pre-s. Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response, I've made another video letter this week. If you'd like to see them become a regular thing, hit subscribe over on Youtube to help me know how many people are interested!

Sitting on the table in front of me - is my crowbar. It's a cheap, hardware store brand from here in New Zealand, and I bought it four years ago, thinking it might be useful in the small bit of house repair my partner and I had in our first home.

That small repair became a big one, and here a few years later, in another house with even bigger problems, I find myself holding, using, hammering on this crowbar once again.

Its flat black is now marred with scrapes and dents and gouges, turning gunmetal black, silver, rust orange red in turns, then back again. Its teeth honed by thousands of hammers and pries and pulls.

Age and experience wearing into it, same as it does me, day after day.

But what's unexpected - is how it's become one of my favorite tools.

Not just because of how damn well it does its job, but because of how I feel about it.

When I look at it, sitting there on a table, I feel something pulling at my heart, deep inside. Something warm like love. Solid like family.

I know, I know, it's a crowbar.

But how many things in my life have I held this much? Trusted this much? Pressed and pushed and asked please don't let me down and been met by, every single time?

It's a short list. My twenty-year old leatherman is on it, and probably not too many others.

There's something we don't talk about enough, in this age of online shopping and shipping and bin-tipping.

Something about that relationship we have with our tools, that courses back through our hands, grips our fingers tight, says, this is what we came down from the trees for.

They become a little part of us, and we - hammers searching for nails - become a little like them too.

It's a tool, sure. Yes.

But it's also me.

Have a felt week,

-Steven

p.s. The best thing I heard all week was the excellent "Voice of the Kākāpō" series. Scroll down and start with Episode 1, and use headphones if you've got 'em!