Are You In A Vortex?

This past weekend I bought a nice little contraption to go on top of a 5-gallon bucket to suck up wood shavings.  Let me explain.  I enjoy woodworking from time to time in the garage, and one thing woodworkers do is generate sawdust and wood shavings.  Sometimes, a lot of sawdust and shavings.

There are some pretty nice cyclonic vacuum units with a price tag to match to suck up all this mess.  You’ve probably seen huge cyclonic units on the outside of buildings.  They look like a big funnel with a chute at the bottom where the debris drops.

The way they work is amazingly simple.  There’s a tube at the top of the funnel hooked to a powerful vacuum.  So, this tube creates a vacuum inside the funnel.  There’s another tube connected at an angle to the side of the funnel near the top.  This tube is connected to the hose lines that are used to suck up the debris.  Are you following me?

What happens is this.  The top tube creates the vacuum in the funnel. The debris gets sucked up by the tube on the side of the funnel, near the top.  The debris gets sucked into the funnel and goes round and round, hence the name, ‘cyclone’ and ultimately the heavier particles, like wood shavings fall to the bottom of the funnel where they fall in to a waste bin.

The little plastic contraption I bought?  Well, it snaps on to a 5 gallon bucket, and my portable shop-vacuum to basically do the same thing for about $20.00

My question is this.  As the first quarter has closed, and all those resolutions are forgotten, do you sometimes feel like your life is getting sucked up with all the debris and minutiae  going round and round, until finally, it all settles in to a box.

Maybe now would be a good time to think about what you’re doing and why.  Seek out the joy we can all bring to each other in our jobs and try not to sweat the small.  After all, in the end, it’s all small stuff.

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