After my panic attacks, woodworking became the one good thing I could count on

I had my first panic attack on New Year’s Day 2022 and, in the months that followed, increasingly craved serenity. Woodworking emerged as a place I might get some reprieve after a traumatic event changed how I experienced the world. I signed up at the Victorian Woodworkers Association in North Melbourne for its price, emphasis on craft and the pedigree of its tutors; the open class let me make whatever I wanted from day one.

I had pictured monastic peace and slow craft, but the basement workshop delivered limb‑severing machinery, loud noises, amateur embarrassment, compromises and mistakes. My first project was laid out on a thin MDF panel — the first of three cabinets to house my record collection, turntables and DJ mixer.

I wanted to avoid power tools and practise dovetailing, but my tutor, Isabel Avendaño‑Hazbún, warned that people spend decades on that skill and steered me to machinery for safety and speed. Listening to Isabel has kept my body intact; when she yells across the machine room, it is to stop me cutting off my hand.

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