Unexpected insight

Christmas day is alwaya spent in the weird haze overeating creates, I spent most of my day infront of the television half asleep. One of the many shows I snoozed through was a french documentary about samer, I guess you could call them the native Swedish? I found it alot more interesting then I thought I would at first, it focused alot on the breeding and keeping of reindeer and doing ones best to survive on what nature provides.

Besides eating the meat from the animals and making shoes and clothing from the skin and fur, they also often used the bones and horns in their handicraft. This is where I got the most intriguing revelation, you often find theese kind of handicraft items at markets or tourist trap kind of shops and even though they are advertised as handmade I guess I always thought there was some element of mass production behind it. The man who was the main subject for the documentary spoke about how empty he felt once a year, just after a very famous market where he sold all his handmade things. He said he had to do it to make sure he and his family had enough money to survive since just keeping reindeers is not a very lucrative business, but it made him really unhappy to give up something he put so much time and love into to total strangers.

Right then I knew just how he felt, I'm the same whenever I sell paintings. I feel a kinda bad for never recognizing that the same amount of effort and care go into something that I've just about always considered to be nothing more than tourist trinkets and souvenirs.