Shoving the poly-wire brush up into the narrow throat of a 1927 masonry fireplace is a specific kind of violence that nobody warns you about in trade school. You’re not just cleaning; you’re interrogating a century of heat, and the ash doesn’t give up its secrets without a fight. My name is Owen S.K., and I have spent exactly 17 years looking at the world through a thick layer of creosote and the peculiar logic of draft physics. Most people think a chimney is just a hole for smoke to escape, but they’re wrong. It’s a repository for every cold night, every argument held in front of a hearth, and every ounce of fuel that didn’t quite burn the way it was supposed to.

The 47 Plates of Unresolved History

I’m writing this because I’m currently covered in a fine layer of gray dust that refuses to leave my pores, and also because I cried during a dish soap commercial this morning. It wasn’t even a particularly good one. There was just this shot of a woman looking at a stack of 47 plates and laughing because she knew they’d be clean soon, and for some reason, the idea of things being ‘finished’ or ‘resolved’ just broke me.

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My life doesn’t feel like a clean plate. It feels like a chimney in a house that’s been lived in for 107 years. It’s layered. It’s complicated. It’s full of buildup that I’m supposed to hate but secretly depend on for warmth.

I’ve realized that our core frustration isn’t that we’re messy; it’s that we’re taught to believe that the mess is a failure rather than a byproduct of existence. We are obsessed with the ‘clean slate’-that mythical state where nothing has happened yet. But a clean slate is just an empty house. It’s cold. It has no character. It has no 7-year history of keeping the rain out.

The Miracle of Functional Neglect

Yesterday, I was inspecting a flue in a house that felt too quiet. The owner was one of those people who buys everything in white-white rugs, white sofas, white intentions. She wanted the chimney cleaned because she’d seen a single spark fly out of the hearth three weeks ago. I got up there with my headlamp and my mirrors, and I saw a structure that was, quite frankly, a miracle of neglect. The bricks were 87 percent gone.

If I had scrubbed that chimney to the standards she wanted, the whole thing would have collapsed into her pristine white living room. I had to tell her, ‘Ma’am, your neglect is currently your best friend.’ People never like being told that their flaws are functional. They want to be perfect, even if perfection means structural failure. I sat there for 27 minutes just trying to explain that some things are safer when they’re a little bit dirty. It’s a contrarian angle, I know. Every safety manual says ‘clean it,’ but experience says ‘understand the weight of the soot.’

The Geography of Regret

Sometimes I think about the people who try to escape their own buildup. I remember a guy I met at a diner a few months back-a traveler who was obsessed with documentation and papers, thinking that if he could just get his visament paperwork perfectly aligned, he could finally leave his past behind in some dusty corner of the Midwest. He was looking for a fresh start in a place where nobody knew his name or his 17 failed business attempts.

[The mess is the structure]

The Balance: Technicality and Heart

I’ve made mistakes, obviously. I once told a client that their chimney was fine when it clearly wasn’t, mostly because I was distracted by the way the sunlight was hitting a jar of 77 marbles on their windowsill. I let my guard down, and that fireplace ended up smoking out a Christmas party. It was a small disaster, but it taught me that precision and emotion are dangerous bedfellows.

You have to be technical when you’re looking at a 57-degree bend in a flue, but you have to be human when you’re looking at the person who has to live under it. I struggle with that balance. I find myself getting angry at the bricks for being old, then feeling sorry for them because they’ve worked so hard for 97 years without a break. It’s an exhausting way to live, empathizing with inanimate objects while my own life feels like it’s waiting for a sweep.

Respecting the Buildup

If you look at the way creosote forms, it’s not an accident. It happens when the wood isn’t seasoned enough, or the fire isn’t hot enough, or the air isn’t moving fast enough. It’s a result of ‘not enough.’ We are the same. Our emotional buildup comes from the things we didn’t say, the fires we didn’t let burn hot enough because we were afraid of the flame. We simmer in our own half-heartedness and then wonder why the walls are covered in black gunk.

But here’s the thing: that gunk, once it’s there, it becomes part of the architecture. You can’t just rip it out without consequences. I’ve seen 37 different houses where the owners tried to DIY their way into a clean life, and they ended up with more damage than if they’d just left it alone. You have to respect the buildup. You have to know which pieces of soot are holding up the 137-pound chimney cap.

The Retrofit Mindset

Relevance isn’t found in the cleaning; it’s found in the endurance. We are relevant because we have survived the fires, not because we’ve avoided them. I’m 47 years old, and I’m finally starting to realize that my own cracks and my own soot are what make me a stable structure. I’m not a new build. I’m a retrofit. I’m a 237-year-old chimney with a liner that’s seen better days, but I still draw. I still pull the smoke up and away from the heart of the house.

I’ll keep my soot, thank you very much. I’ll keep the memories of the 17 chimneys that almost killed me and the 7 commercials that made me cry for no reason. It’s all part of the draft. It’s all part of the way we stay upright in a world that wants to sweep us under the rug.