Dedication is not always something you see from the outside. It doesn’t always look impressive. Most of the time, it looks like repetition—long hours, mistakes, corrections, and starting over again. It looks like a man standing in front of a board, measuring twice because he already learned the hard way what happens when you don’t.
I have spent more than thirty years in wood working, 25 years of which is in cabinet making. Not watching it. Not studying it from a distance. Living it. Every cut, every wrong measurement, every warped board, every job that didn’t go as planned—those were my teachers. I did not learn this trade from shortcuts. I learned it by staying in it long enough for it to shape me.
Research, for me, was never separate from the work. It was part of survival. You either find better ways, or you get left behind. I kept asking questions—how to cut better, how to reduce waste, how to make things stronger, faster, cleaner. Not because it sounded good, but because every mistake cost money, time, and reputation.
As the years passed, something changed. I found myself not only building cabinets, but helping others build their own start. I saw people who wanted to enter this industry but didn’t know where to begin. I saw fear—fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of losing money.
So I spoke to them the way I my Nanay had spoken to me: start anyway.
You don’t wait until you’re ready. You don’t wait until everything is perfect. You begin with what you have, and you learn as you go. That is how this trade has always worked.
Encouraging startups became part of what I do. Not because I had everything figured out, but because I knew what it felt like to struggle at the beginning. If more people stay in this craft, then the craft itself survives. That matters to me.
Then something happened that I could not fix with experience.
My health started to decline. Diabetes. It is a persistent disease. It takes from you little by little. Strength goes first. Then endurance. Then the small things—the details you used to remember without effort.
At first, it was easy to dismiss. A missed step. A forgotten measurement. Calling someone by the wrong name and laughing it off.
But it did not stop there.
There are days when I forget the names of my workers. Men I have worked with for years. Men I have trusted with projects, deadlines, responsibilities. I would look at them, recognize their faces, know they belong in my shop—and still, the name would not come.
There are moments, harder ones, when even inside my own home, something slips. I have five children. There have been times—brief, but real—when I struggled to recall their names. I know who they are. I know what they mean to me. But the name, something so simple, would not come when I reached for it.
That is why I have learned to cover the gaps with terms of endearment—Boy, Nene, Boom Boom, Ate, Kuya, Pogi. Not because I find it amusing, but because there are moments when the names are simply not there. I reach for them, and there is nothing.
It is a small thing to anyone watching. But to me, it is not small at all.
That is when I understood that this is not something small.
I became aware of something I never had to think about before: I am losing parts of myself that I depended on for decades.
There were moments when I could have stopped. Moments when it would have been easier to sit down and feel sorry for what was happening.
But I refused to end my story that way.
Last September 2025, at a time when my condition was at its worst, I started building the JWB Cabinet Calculator.
Not because I was comfortable. Not because I had extra time. I built it because I needed a way to continue contributing.
If my body is slowing down, then I will find another way to work.
If my memory is no longer reliable, then I will create a system that holds the information for me.
If I cannot move the same way I used to in the workshop, then I will move differently—through ideas, through structure, through tools that others can use.
This calculator is not just software. It carries everything I have learned—how materials are used, how costs are computed, how mistakes happen, and how they can be avoided. It is a translation of the years of my actual work into something that can guide others.
I am fully aware that I am not getting stronger. In many ways, I am becoming less capable in the physical side of this trade. That is the truth.
But I am not done giving.
If I can no longer produce at the same level with my hands, then I will produce through what I know.
If I forget small details, then I will build systems that remember them.
If my time in the workshop becomes limited, then I will extend my reach beyond it.
I am still a cabinet maker.
Not only because I can build, but because I continue to add something to this industry—while I still can.
And that, to me, is what matters now.
Originally published on Benjie's Bench - Measuring Life's lessons in Millimeters
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