Learn to Repair Your World
I just finished reading this excellent article from WIRED by Scott Gilbertson: When a Vintage RV Is Your Home, Repair Is a Way of Life | WIRED.
It talks about the author’s adventure to buy a 50-year-old RV and move into it with his family, traveling across the US while maintaining and repairing the vehicle himself.
He starts out with near-zero knowledge of how to do it, but meets people along the way who help him and teach him (such as his uncle).
I’ve been meaning to do more handiwork recently, and this is a good reminder that there is always someone that you can go to for help and who can teach you (or even YouTube).
Unlike the author, however, you don’t need to start by going all-in on moving your family into a 50-year-old RV. (I have tons of respect for that, but I wouldn’t go as far myself.) You can start with small projects that help build your confidence, and then move on to larger and larger projects.
Before moving into my own condo, I wasn’t very handy. (I don’t think I’ve ever filled my own wiper fluid because my brother would always do it for me.) But, I started small. I installed some extra shelves in my closet. I fixed a broken toilet flush. More recently, I helped my girlfriend sand and repaint her bedside table. These are all fairly low-stakes things (after all, if the painting doesn’t work out, you can always resand and repaint.)
As a techie, I do a lot of tech things myself that others might pay for. (Building my website, self-hosting a media server, cloud storage, my own VPN, using a Raspberry Pi to turn regular speakers into smart speakers). Why wouldn’t I extend this skillset beyond software and into hardware? And by hardware, I mean physical things, not just computer hardware.
Building and repairing things on your own can be really rewarding, on top of generally helping reduce our ecological footprint. So, take inspiration from Scott Gilbertson, your handy uncle, or your favorite DIY YouTuber, and find a new project you can tackle, that will make you learn something, and make your world or someone else’s a little bit better.