I got given a second hand bike the other day, thought it just needed some air in the tyres but turns out the back inner tube was fucked, by the end of the day I’d basically completely disassembled the thing and put it back together (including fucking Kmart selling me a tube that had a fucking hole in it). My hands were covered in grease, and the bike was back in excellent order, rode so much better.
I basically only changed a tyre, but I was out in the yard in the afternoon sun, some music playing, and at the end of the day I had something to show for what I did. Can’t recommend it enough.
You've described my exact problem with
hoardingcollecting and repairing/upgrading/modding cheap guitars. I swear, I will finish fixing you up someday, pawn shop Starcaster. Right after I finish the setup on the 7-string Jackson, and a fret level/crown/dress job on my kid's Ibanez...
not getting cheated out of repair costs is really satisfying. I made an $800 water line repair for $20 parts and three days of digging. GODLY feeling.
Also keep in mind that capitalism wants you to buy a new thing if something is broken, so fixing things counts as praxis.
fuck yeah. I recently started learning to sharpen knives. Not quite the same thing, but being able to spend some time just making a thing better feels so fucking great, especially when it's something useful like that. Laboring feel good when not alienated from the fruits of it???? :curious-marx:
I had a very similar experience the other day, it did wonders for my mood.
Oh yeah. I've been building a little microshelter out of scrap parts since lockdown. A follow up project for my two story cubby house for the kids.
I hadn't done wood work since high school.
There's just something super nice about making a physical thing with your hands, or bringing something broken back to life.
I started a construction job this year, and just having the tools and scrap material to build has done wonders for me. I have a lot of nervous energy and being able to expend it on small, low stakes projects is awesome. Plus I GET TO SEE THE FRUITS OF MY LABOR!!!
The best feeling, isn't it? All of that energy producing something for yourself, not being taken away.
It really has helped my adhd starting a trade before that I wanted to die coming into work.
This is what I don't understand about young people shunning building trades as a career choice. It's immensely satisfying work compared to some bullshit desk job and every plumber and electrician I know makes great money and is either in a union that provides great health care or they're on their own on track to retire in their 50s.
There are a couple of theories for that.
The u.s greatly looks down on blue collar workers even though both parties like to give lip service and virtue signal to them. Because of that the education system doesn't offer it as an alternative to traditional 4 year colleges or the military (which gets my tin foil hat tingling).
The vast majority of people live in urban areas therefore don't have exposure to them because everyone in their family and social circle either works an office job or service industry. Which had the negative effect of leaving this type of work to anti union rural chuds who do have exposure to this work. Because of said chuds being overwhelming in the trades they are gatekeepers who poorly advertise the work and use nepotism to keep people out of it and give it to their friends or in low paying laborer positions.
The trades can be rough on the body but that's because boomers love breaking their backs to prove how tough they are instead of taking care of their bodies with yoga, eating healthy, find better solutions to do a job and not doing meth in the porta potties.
We need some lefty hammer swingers to break up the reactionary strangle hold on it. Anyone want to help me?
Insightful post. Especially wrt the nepotism and gatekeeping by chud subcontractors and doing things the hard way. I'm in northern VT and every company is some french canadian last name and every male in that family works for the business.
I've been in my attic and basement for weeks replumbing and rewiring our 1940s house and it's honestly pretty brutal on the lower body and back. Taking breaks and stretching really helps. I'm on SSDI for life now but I'd take that work over my past life's choices in a second if I could. Plumbing and hvac is pretty objectively interesting work.
Yea I'll tell anyone who will listen that a union trade job is very satisfying & fruitful.
Fixing stuff is incredibly satisfying. The culture of repairing broken stuff is something that's being directly taken away from us by capitalism; nowadays it's often way faster and easier to buy something new instead of fixing it. Companies go out of their way to make their stuff harder to repair by a non professional. This for me is one of the signs of the degeneration of capitalism; the fact that companies need to make their products more and more encapsulated, less and less practical to use due to design restrictions that are here only to preserve the margin of profit of the corporation shows that this economic system has nothing to offer anymore.
Spending time away from wage slavery for personal life fixes / fulfillment is one of the best arguments for communism. See also, growing your own food.
Not quite the same but I sometimes collect brass from a desert shooting spot, and right now I've got half a backpack full of jingly bois that I'm gonna melt down into fat golden coins.
Fixing shit rules until you have to do it for a living. I'd much rather be installing or building things than troubleshooting them
I'm a lab technician so I mostly fuck about with chemicals and shit but this week has been really cathartic as I had to put some new trolleys together with a mallet that gave me big New Soviet Man energy.
I've also been doing some DIY shit as one of the trolley casters was fucked on arrival, and one of the new microscopes had a loose screw so I had to rummage in my box of scraps for a slightly larger screw.
