Everyone starts out…
No matter what field…
At first, everyone is a beginner. You don’t know anything, you can’t do anything, right?
The same task gets better on the hundredth try than on the first…
These days, with the spread of the internet (YouTube, blogs, and so on), the standard of Sunday mechanic work has risen across the board…
I can’t afford to be careless… I’m striving to improve every day.
In conversations with customers,
I sometimes hear them say, “I’m embarrassed because I did this work myself.”
Honestly, I don’t think it looks particularly skillful or neat, but somehow I feel a sense of importance coming through.
And if the work was done in a poor environment, I’m often amazed in reverse… I can feel the cry of the soul.
Whether you know something or don’t know it, whether you can do it or can’t do it—let’s set that aside for now.
For example, suppose there are two people with the same specs.
One has air conditioning, bright lighting, 100V power readily available, machine tools like a lathe, milling machine, and welder all within ten steps, complete tools and materials with nothing lacking, a PC and manuals nearby, and safe storage during work.
The other works in a hot summer and cold winter, dim lighting where you can’t see anything by evening, 100V power from a cord reel far away, only a hand drill and grinder for tools, missing tools that can’t be removed mid-work, missing materials that can’t be installed, research done on a smartphone, no manuals or parts lists on hand, and no way to safely store work in progress.
The question is: which of these two situations allows for safer, more reliable, better work?
I think environment and equipment are extremely important for everything.
I often tell customers this… for example,
“If I closed the shop and lost this environment, I wouldn’t even think about servicing my own bike at home, and I simply wouldn’t do the work,” and when I say that,
they say, “What?! Why not?”
It might be an overlooked fact that without equipment—tools, machine tools, materials, and so on—you can’t do anything at all.
Thinking about it that way, when someone works at home with “knowing or not knowing, being able or not being able” plus “lack of equipment,” I praise them saying, “Wow! You’ve come this far!” and then quietly redo that bracket they made… or rewire it…
But I think that doing something, even if you fail, teaches you the effort and hardship in a way that not doing it never could (*’ω’*)
And when you overcome that mountain of hardship, it becomes good nourishment in your own experience.
