I had another amusing opportunity to follow guidance instead of logic… (for anyone reading this who doesn’t know me, it will be useful for you to know ahead of time that I am a professional artist, I used to run my own art school, and am the author of craft books.)
It’s been many years since I’ve owned a drafting table, and I wanted a simple, standard, lightweight one, and had been interested in this model pictured, which runs about $200/$250. (Plus about $50 shipping if it’s mail ordered.)
While I was moving into my tiny new garage apartment I started looking on Craigslist. Finally I saw one of these tables for $50, in an area about 20 – 25 minutes away, and excitedly contacted the seller. She was busy for the next couple of days, and suggested that I could check back with her and pick it up in 3-4 days, and that in the meantime, she’d let me know if anyone else contacted her about it. That was fine because I was busy moving anyway.
When it was time to contact her again, I got a strong feeling that I shouldn’t buy that drafting table. I wasn’t happy with that feeling though, and tried to talk myself out of it! I reasoned that this was such a good deal, and I needed it! I struggled with that for a while, finally doing the process where I walked through a virtual reality of buying the table, and another virtual reality of not buying the table, and comparing how I felt. Not buying the table felt better every time I tried that! So, after struggling with the conflict for a while, I finally went with my Inner Being, and told the owner that I wouldn’t be coming to look at it after all.
A few days later, just before driving up to my dad’s place, (which is about 40 minutes away) I was again checking out Craigslist … and I found another one of these very same drafting tables, only this one was listed for $5! (Yep, you read tha right! Five dollars!) And it included a handy, attached tray (which costs about $30 more when bought new.)
I called and asked if there was something wrong with it, and why it was so cheap, and the gal said she just wanted to get rid of it quickly. And her location was just a couple of minutes from my dad’s place!
I told her I’d take it and I was on my way – but as it turned out, that table wasn’t even the “main event”!
The gal who was selling it is a professor at the College of William and Mary, working on her doctorate on creativity - she is interviewing artists for her paper and was VERY interested in me and my artwork! Of course if I had gotten the first table, not only would it have cost more and not had the tray, but then I never would have met this professor!
We traded emails and agreed to keep in contact … and I got another satisfying confirmation of why following my guidance, even when it doesn’t seem to make obvious, rational sense, is always the best thing to do!
