There is great satisfaction to completing a task, particularly one way outside of your normal wheelhouse, that is quite unique. I am very poor at handy man tasks and so anything I can do with my hands is always a great win. Whether it’s replacing a broken aerial on the car, putting in a new passenger window or using a chainsaw without losing a limb it’s pretty neat to be able to do. I have to note – putting a passenger window into a car after smashing the original is a difficult proposition and I’m eternally grateful to my mate Nathan for doing the really tricky work. He is extremely detail oriented and manages to keep everything in the right place. I’m crap at that. I did smash the window though so … yeah oops.
Over this weekend past it was all tasks I’m not great at doing. Putting them off has only made things worse and I can’t afford for someone else to do it so I got amongst it. In addition to the work noted above I dug drains, cut down trees and tree limbs damaged by wind and rain, repaired a damaged fireplace flue… it was pretty amazing for me. Maybe not someone else but for me it was great. Especially when I contrasted it to building a protected guest wireless network for a friend – that took a lot less time and effort than all that other stuff. It’s right in my wheel house so while tricky was much less challenging.
Looking back on the work completed, I certainly felt differently about the tasks – I approached the ones I wasn’t sure about with trepidation and stress, and the ones I was confident with in a much more relaxed manner. The output was the same – job done and the lesson I’ve taken away from it is that a bit more confidence in myself is not going to go astray with those more left field (for me) jobs. The outcomes can be good even if the process is difficult. Getting to the end of that work though is great.
There are loads of instructional videos on the internet and they’ve been very handy. I try to keep things as nice and neat as possible, but I have had a couple of re-do’s after researching my activities more thoroughly. I hate coming back to a job – particularly if I’ve found it onerous or difficult on the first run through. This post is to celebrate the times I got it right first go – with a combination of research and luck usually. Over the weekend though it was persistence and effort too that got the win on the board. Keep at it once you start and see it through – that was the mantra I ran in my head as I dug drains and did heavy lifting. It had to be done and it got done. As I drove past it this morning on the way to work, I was quite pleased with the results and its nice to do something where you *can* see the results – unlike most of my work in IT! So keep at and keep trying new things 🙂 You’ll get there if you’re persistent and spend the time on the research.
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