Failure, One Hobby at a Time

I’ve never had a lot of hobbies. I didn’t think I had time for them when I did, and didn’t make time for them when I didn’t. But that has been changing lately.

Maybe it’s because I'm in my thirties now, or maybe it’s because DIY Internet videos make everything seem so achievable, but I’ve been trying my hand at new skills. Specifically auto repair and woodworking. It’s not going well.

Turns out that not everyone is cut out to be a mechanic or a carpenter. Especially this guy.

Auto repair shouldn’t be this hard. In one sense, that’s a commentary on the unnecessarily complicated computerized parts auto makers put in cars. The average car has something like 50+ electronic sensors these days. Good luck trouble shooting that with a wrench.

On the other hand, this is a commentary on my personal revelations regarding auto repair.

I don’t think you should end up breaking three parts for every one you fix. This math doesn’t result in a working vehicle.

I have this old, beat up truck that’s just begging to be tinkered with. But it’s getting the best of me.

I replaced a headlight, and ended up breaking the headlight mounting in the process. I went to replace the door lock tumbler and managed to break the new one, disconnected the door lock mechanism, and jammed the driver side door closed all at the same time.

Don’t worry, I did finally get the door open. Of course, I ended up breaking the interior door handle and slicing my arm open on a rusty metal edge that I believe doubled as a tetanus farm  in the process.  

After I got back to more or less baseline (the door could open and had a handle) I did the drive of shame and went to my mechanic. I handed him the lock tumblers and made it sound like I didn’t spend two weeks basically beating the door with a hammer.

While I’m not completely helpless when it comes to minor auto repair, grease monkey weekends are not for me.

So I turned my hand to woodworking. Even though I’ve spent very little time around saws and have built next to nothing, I thought the time had come to try my hand at wood. After all, my grandfather was a successful carpenter so I figured it must run in my blood more than auto repair.

I picked the easiest project I could find that we had a practical need for at the house (a bookshelf) from a popular home repair website and gathered all my materials. I then measured not just twice, but four times and made sure my pencil lines for the cut were straight as a razor.  

Then I proceeded to cut a line that looked like the coast of California. This cut was so far from being a straight line, I would’ve had more success karate chopping the board with my head. Good thing the circular saw makes a racket when it’s running, because my commentary as the saw blade deviated from the aforementioned cut line was not rated G.

The one good thing about wood is that you can make adjustments on the fly. So I changed the size of the shelves so I could re-cut the jagged California piece. However this led to a botching of the original bookshelf design (and more bad words) which also led to my overlooking a mis-measurement that I only discovered after screwing the incorrect pieces together. At this point, I was just turning on the saw for sound cover.

Once the bookshelf was assembled and miraculously standing all I had to do, in the words of the carpenter who built it in the online video was, “sand, prime, and paint it.” Finally, the easy part.

Au contraire. Sanding was an absolute mess. I should have just blown chalk into an industrial fan that was blowing into my face. It would have left less particulate matter in my nasal passages I’m sure. And the final coat of paint looked like my little sister’s bike after I took a can of old paint and slathered it all over the bike as if it were cream cheese on a bagel when she was eight.

I will say this though. After the grunting, sweaty process of trying to fix or build something, beyond the flurry of bad words and thoughts of destroying whatever I’m working on Office Space style, I do end up learning something. And it’s often something I only could have learned from having to undo some error I made or collateral damage I caused.

And sometimes the lesson is higher level, and more generally applicable. Like how I should leave auto repair and woodworking to the professionals.