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I ’m writing this on the first day of spring, and it’s snowing. And while there’s a certain irony in that, it’s all good. We’ve survived worse. We are, after all, New Yorkers, survivors by nature. (Yes, it counts in the suburbs.) All that aside, I too was looking forward to spring . . . until I heard the forecast, reminding me of how little control we actually have.
And therein, dear Congregants, is the sermon for the day. Things go wrong in the calendar, in our lives, in our DIY projects. The best we can do is accept the cards dealt us and move on. (Or as the old saying goes: Man supposes; God disposes.)
Now, I have little control over the calendar and much less in daily living (at least it seems on Mondays), but when it comes to DIY, well, don’t even go there. DIY is essentially a craft of trial and error, experimentation and trying out new skills.
When tackling a project at home, I suggest a very linear approach. In other words, plan what you need, assemble your tools and materials and allow yourself time to complete the project properly—building into that time the grace of redoing something that breaks, fails to please or is just plain wrong. I say grace because we too often work our projects—and for that matter our calendars and our lives—with one eye toward the next thing to be done.
Nothing works right in rush mode. When it comes to DIY, especially DIY with power tools, you have to remain in the moment. Focus on the here-and-now and let the challenges of later remain there.
Here’s a for-instance from my own DIY resume. I am not a plumber, but I did not want to pay a plumber the $47,000 he would charge for the 10 minutes he would need to fix a dripping shower control. Initially I dreaded the idea of giving up a Saturday I had planned as a day of relaxation with the boys down at the club to deal with pipes and washers and water. (Confession: There really is no club. Come to think of it, there aren’t too many boys anymore.) I even had visions of tearing down a wall if the leak was deeply hidden. But the reality of the situation left no choice but to get in the moment. Or, as W.C. Fields once said: “Take the bull by the tail and face the situation.”
Rather than cursing the faucet, the washers, the wall, the principles of water and myself, I resigned myself to the fact that there would be on this particular Saturday, some blood, multiple trips to Big Orange, and nothing else accomplished on my DIY list. So, I set up a comfy lawn chair in the bathtub (really), aligned my tools along the rim and gave myself up to the leak.
In fact, the day involved two trips to Big Orange and a third to a plumbing supply house to get the rather obscure parts required for the job. Luckily there was no wall reconstruction in this particular job. But the “moment” actually took four hours (I told you I wasn’t a plumber), and if an actual pro had taken the amount of time it took your humble correspondent to repair the leak, I would have had to adopt him. But at the end of the day—for that’s what it was—the leak was fixed.
I know plumbing professionals around the Island are snickering at my inefficiency. That’s ok. DIY is also the pursuit of personal accomplishment, and wasteful of time as it might seem, I accomplished what I set out to do. And it was a pleasurable experience, something beyond cost or time, because I kept my focus singular.
So it should be for you. As you’ve heard me say countless times in this space, the chores you tackle around the house should be a source of joy in a sometimes cluttered and breakneck life, a chance to exercise a different set of muscles and a different part of your brain. There are other places you can go to fee the anxiety of daily life.
So strap on that tool belt, slip into the moment and get busy. And then tell me you’re not smiling a bit more when you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.
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