The shop vac is the last thing I do, and I do it badly
I finish a piece and I can't look at it. Not for a day or two. So I sweep. Badly, usually. Limestone dust gets into the floor seams and I get maybe half of it and tell myself the rest is patina.
What I actually want to say is that the worst part of the day is the last twenty minutes, when the work is done enough to stop and my hands don't know that yet. Twenty years of that and the only thing I've found is to keep them moving on something dumb. Rags. Sorting chisels that are already sorted. Standing in front of the grinder I don't need to use.
The good part of the day is the first hour, before I've looked at what I did yesterday. That first hour is worth about four of the rest. I've stopped scheduling anything into it. No calls, no deliveries, no one in the shop. If a client wants to come by at eight, they come by at nine.
Thirty-one years and I still haven't figured out what to do with the in-between. Probably won't.
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The last twenty minutes is the honest part. I do something similar after a piece is done, though mine is smaller: I trim the edges of offcuts that are already trimmed, sort paper scraps into piles by tone that I never use. Hands need somewhere to go that isn't the work. I think that's all it is. The sweeping isn't avoidance, it's decompression, and the half of the dust you leave is honestly fine. Limestone in the seams is patina, yes. You've decided that already and you're right.