Up Today I have a guest post from my new friend Scary Dad from the ScaryDad Blog. Where he brings all the best Halloween, horror, and DIY projects from his own brains and from all around the web.
Why DIY?
When I was a little kid my bike started making a weird noise. I took it apart and set everything out so I would remember how to put it back together. But something happened- I missed a step or lost a piece and I just couldn’t get it back together again. My dad didn’t know what I had done or what I might have done wrong, so he couldn’t help me. I had to take it to the bike shop and spend money on getting it fixed. And I felt so helpless for it. I hated the feeling that I had actively messed up something I depended on and couldn’t fix it.
My mom offered that I was “not mechanically inclined,” suggesting a lack of innate talent rather than failure. I think it was so that I wouldn’t feel bad for having failed, but that made it worse. I wanted to be mechanically inclined. I wanted to be able to fix my bike if it broke. I didn’t want to be at the mercy of the shop mechanic who, even at nine years old I was sure was telling me and charging me whatever he wanted because he knew I didn’t know enough to argue.
So, time passed and I’m a grownup now and I know how to fix my own bike. I also know how to fix a lot of other stuff. Whether from lack of funds, boredom, or just stupid circumstances I have repaired, rebuilt, restored, repurposed, or remodeled all kinds of things over the years. And I still do it even if financially I don’t have to.
There is a sense of both accomplishment and independence associated with DIY. When you can create, improve, or repair something it makes you just that little bit less dependent on “the grid.” Not that the grid is a bad thing in and of itself, but being 100% dependent on anything is not a good way to be. In today’s world a little self-reliance goes a long way.
If you learn to do things for yourself you no longer rely on contractors or repairmen, especially for small jobs (that they charge more for because they have to make it worth their time).You truly do become more self-reliant and self-sufficient. And after a while you want to apply the DIY ethic to other aspects of your life. Survival Punk and Scarydad exist for this very reason.
More than a few times, as I’ve pondered a pile of reclaimed wood or some yellow-pad blueprint for something or other, I’ve thought to myself, “Dude, why don’t you just buy/have someone make/install/deliver one of those? Wouldn’t it be easier?”
And in a lot of cases the answer is Yes.
And yet I spend my weekends in my garage; barking knuckles, drilling holes, staring at pieces that just don’t quite fit and figuring out how to make them fit…
So why do I do it? Why do I insist on taking the extra time (and sometimes extra money) to make something instead of just running over to China-Mart and buying some low, low-priced piece of plastic crap?
Because it’s worth it.
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