No Cup Holder, No Problem

On Old Cars, Craft, and the Joy of Doing Things the "Hard Way"

The wind howls through the old windows, which I have to roll down by hand. The speedometer sits at 100 km/h, the odometer ticks past 375,000. The gear lever is big and clunky, changing gears feels like a workout in itself. The steering is so loose I can turn the wheel ten degrees and the car still drives straight. Bruce Springsteen’s The River blasts through the cassette player.

I’m not sure I’ve felt more joy than I did in that moment last week, borrowing my old man’s ute to pick up some timber for a bench/storage unit I’m building for our apartment.

I’ve always loved woodwork, the smell, the noise, the dust, the magic of turning nothing into something. I’ve even grown to appreciate the splinters. They’re like proof I actually did something to earn today’s result.

In another life, I think 18-year-old me ditches engineering entirely (I dropped out after a year anyway) and becomes a carpenter.

Not the kind that hangs doors or does roofing or skirting boards, though I’ve done all of that at one point. I mean the kind of woodworking where you make things—turning timber, building pieces here and there over the years.

I’ve never been particularly brilliant at it. Especially when I watch real craftsmen at work, furniture makers with a level of finesse that reminds me I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve got skills, sure, but theirs? It’s like they’ve been speaking the language fluently while I’ve only just learned the alphabet.

But that’s not the point. I know comparison is the thief of joy, and there’s no sense in measuring myself against people who’ve put in just as many hours into their craft as I have mine.

Funny enough, this isn’t even what I intended to write about this week. It just poured out. The real topic is something else entirely, how simplicity is the richness we’re actually chasing.

Especially today, when everything moves so fast. We work ourselves to the bone, save endlessly, and then spend on things we’ve convinced ourselves hold value. But maybe true value isn’t in what we buy, it’s in how we feel when we do something. In what it gives back to us.

After that drive, I rang my dad and told him he could keep my car, the ute had stolen my heart.

Objectively, it was awful. The steering was loose, it rattled constantly, the windows were a pain, and the cassette needed rewinding after each side. There wasn’t even a cup holder for my coffee.

And yet, if you offered me a brand-new car with all the bells and whistles, I’d still choose the ute. No sensors, no warning beeps, no strange systems I have to disable. Just a big tray and a good time.

I still drive a manual, but this was different. Like going from a digital camera back to medium format film, slower, more intentional, more effort. And I think that’s what I liked most.

It felt closer to how we’re meant to live, slow, intentional, detail-focused.

You can see it everywhere. In an age of AI, instant streaming, YouTube, and Spotify, vinyl records are more popular than they have been in years. Why? Because people love the sound, but I think it goes deeper.

It’s about slowing down, listening to a full album to hear the story. Not just the simplicity of choosing a song on your phone, but getting up, physically picking an album, choosing the side, putting it on the turntable and dropping the needle. It forces you in.

Same with photography. Digital cameras are incredible, but film photography still calls to me. In fact, new versions of old film cameras are being released again, because the demand hasn’t died.

There are aesthetic payoffs, sure, sound and look, but that’s not the main reason people are “going backwards.” I think it’s because it brings them closer to what they’re really after: a slower pace, a more deliberate process. Listening to an album from start to finish. Choosing what to photograph, and why.

These are just a few examples, but I think it’s why I’m not so secretly obsessed with Japanese culture. From the outside looking in, they seem to have this incredible balance between the old and the new. They live in the future while holding on to the past.

Things like no-nail timber systems, turning soybeans into tofu, the art of sword or knife making, there’s so much intention and history behind it.

And at some point in the near future, I’m figuring out a way to photograph some of these incredible craftspeople. Imagine how good those photos would be.

Anyway, I digress. What I admire is how they seem to understand that a life well lived isn’t about what you own, but how you spend your time, who you spend it with, and whether you enjoyed the doing of it.

Let’s not forget, these are the same people who gave us Ikigai, an incredible description of how to live a good life.

I’d love to tie this all off with a tidy motivational line about being present or slowing down or getting into a flow state, but truthfully, I don’t think I’ve got something that good right now.

I will say this though, find the thing that brings you joy, even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

Drive an old car. Do pottery. Buy some records or a film camera. Get into carving timber. Learn to stitch or sew. Bake something. Try to make bread. Weld. Write a book if you’ve always wanted to.

Do something that needs you, your time, your attention. Focus on the little details. Be deliberate with it.

It’s closer to how we’re meant to live. And it’s a great reminder that life doesn’t have to move at 100 kilometres an hour.

But if you are gonna go that fast, do it in an old ute with Bruce Springsteen blaring through a cassette.

Love to all,
Adam

Few makers photos I found in the archives