"Spiritedness, then, may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one's own stuff. It is the prideful basis of self-reliance." - Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft
Few things can be more frustrating than when something out of your control doesn't work. This thing might be sitting right in front of you, but you aren't supposed to touch it. Within the first week of living in my new dorm room, our AC unit began loudly buzzing and putting significantly less air through it. Worst of all, we couldn't turn it off to shut it up because the thermostat wouldn't let us turn the temperature up enough to satisfy its internal thermometer (and for some reason the direct fan level controls stopped working as this noise showed up).
The intended solution to such a problem is to call the facilities team to come fix it. However, the team was backed up by the sheer number of fix-it requests that came with the new school year. The obvious solution, then, was to simply take matters into our own hands. A set of T40 tamper-proof screws stood between us and the inside of the unit. A trip to home depot yielded a set of "security bits" which didn't include a T40 bit (these seem to cap over-the-counter at T30, probably to stop anyone from waltzing out of home depot with the bit required to disassemble the hardware used in most bathrooms, among many other public works). However, the notched flathead fits perfectly into the T40 screw regardless, dodging the tamper-proof pin they irritatingly place in the center to stop people like us.
Upon opening the shell, we were greeted by the large heat exchanger and condensation collection unit with an electronics panel plastered in "HIGH VOLTAGE" stickers. The vigilante repairman cannot be deterred by such minor risks as electrocution by high voltage. A conspicuously placed lightswitch seemingly connected the control unit, complete with handy status LEDs, to the motor. After brief deliberation, we decided to hit the switch and the drum fan spun to a stop as expected. Some fishing around in the drum yielded the cause of all the noise; a plastic bag had been sucked into the drum. A few tense minutes of waiting after turning the power switch back on, and the fan spun up quiet and strong as ever.
In recent years, I have become obsessed with fixing things. There's almost nothing more exciting to me than something broken to repair. The amount of enjoyment I get out of fixing things has interested me recently because I realized I'm not even really attached to fixing my own stuff- I get the same joy, if not a little more, out of fixing other people's stuff.
I think that the quote at the start of this post encapsulates the heart of my motive: self-reliance. It's not that I dislike asking for help, I think, but more that I feel comfortable knowing that I can take matters into my own hands, that I'm limited as little as possible by my own technical knowledge. This isn't to say that I feel unlimited; there is so much I'm clueless about. I just feel satisfied that I take action to reduce that limitation as much as I can. The point about pride is also on the mark. I do feel proud of the things I fix, and my drive to repair rather than replace (or let other people repair it for me, but I'm much less proud of that part).
I do feel, though, that there's another element to my love of repair. Some repairs are really creative- figuring out something with scraps or whatever's laying around is so fun as opposed to ordering a replacement part. Some repairs are a puzzle, where after you figure out how it was supposed to work and restore it you feel like a genius. Some are just plain satisfying because the broken or malfunctioning object has been bothering you for so long. My brain craves the finish product as well- something restored to normal, but with a story. Sometimes the artifacts of repair are visible, like the little sheet metal bracket I cut out of a DVD player cage to fix the broken footpedal mechanism on the furnace room trash can. These little scars hint at the past of the object, and gives it a little soul. This unassuming trash can has stuck around through a lot, and when it broke it was worth the effort of patching up instead of pitching. Sometimes the repair is invisible, as most electronic fixes are. The extra fan that's (foolishly) soldered directly onto the power supply leads kept the temperature of the old dummy WiFi router down, and while nobody ever saw it, each day it went without overheating was a reminder of the little bit of love I put into it. Whether the repair is obvious, whether anyone else notices it, is irrelevant. I think repairing something involves pouring a little bit of your soul into it, and I think that's beautiful.
Few things can be more frustrating than when something out of your control doesn't work. This thing might be sitting right in front of you, but you aren't supposed to touch it. Within the first week of living in my new dorm room, our AC unit began loudly buzzing and putting significantly less air through it. Worst of all, we couldn't turn it off to shut it up because the thermostat wouldn't let us turn the temperature up enough to satisfy its internal thermometer (and for some reason the direct fan level controls stopped working as this noise showed up).
The intended solution to such a problem is to call the facilities team to come fix it. However, the team was backed up by the sheer number of fix-it requests that came with the new school year. The obvious solution, then, was to simply take matters into our own hands. A set of T40 tamper-proof screws stood between us and the inside of the unit. A trip to home depot yielded a set of "security bits" which didn't include a T40 bit (these seem to cap over-the-counter at T30, probably to stop anyone from waltzing out of home depot with the bit required to disassemble the hardware used in most bathrooms, among many other public works). However, the notched flathead fits perfectly into the T40 screw regardless, dodging the tamper-proof pin they irritatingly place in the center to stop people like us.
Upon opening the shell, we were greeted by the large heat exchanger and condensation collection unit with an electronics panel plastered in "HIGH VOLTAGE" stickers. The vigilante repairman cannot be deterred by such minor risks as electrocution by high voltage. A conspicuously placed lightswitch seemingly connected the control unit, complete with handy status LEDs, to the motor. After brief deliberation, we decided to hit the switch and the drum fan spun to a stop as expected. Some fishing around in the drum yielded the cause of all the noise; a plastic bag had been sucked into the drum. A few tense minutes of waiting after turning the power switch back on, and the fan spun up quiet and strong as ever.
In recent years, I have become obsessed with fixing things. There's almost nothing more exciting to me than something broken to repair. The amount of enjoyment I get out of fixing things has interested me recently because I realized I'm not even really attached to fixing my own stuff- I get the same joy, if not a little more, out of fixing other people's stuff.
I think that the quote at the start of this post encapsulates the heart of my motive: self-reliance. It's not that I dislike asking for help, I think, but more that I feel comfortable knowing that I can take matters into my own hands, that I'm limited as little as possible by my own technical knowledge. This isn't to say that I feel unlimited; there is so much I'm clueless about. I just feel satisfied that I take action to reduce that limitation as much as I can. The point about pride is also on the mark. I do feel proud of the things I fix, and my drive to repair rather than replace (or let other people repair it for me, but I'm much less proud of that part).
I do feel, though, that there's another element to my love of repair. Some repairs are really creative- figuring out something with scraps or whatever's laying around is so fun as opposed to ordering a replacement part. Some repairs are a puzzle, where after you figure out how it was supposed to work and restore it you feel like a genius. Some are just plain satisfying because the broken or malfunctioning object has been bothering you for so long. My brain craves the finish product as well- something restored to normal, but with a story. Sometimes the artifacts of repair are visible, like the little sheet metal bracket I cut out of a DVD player cage to fix the broken footpedal mechanism on the furnace room trash can. These little scars hint at the past of the object, and gives it a little soul. This unassuming trash can has stuck around through a lot, and when it broke it was worth the effort of patching up instead of pitching. Sometimes the repair is invisible, as most electronic fixes are. The extra fan that's (foolishly) soldered directly onto the power supply leads kept the temperature of the old dummy WiFi router down, and while nobody ever saw it, each day it went without overheating was a reminder of the little bit of love I put into it. Whether the repair is obvious, whether anyone else notices it, is irrelevant. I think repairing something involves pouring a little bit of your soul into it, and I think that's beautiful.