Duality

     At the moment I have a few posts brewing.  I'm not sure if I will continue on the same path that I started for each of them, or even finish and publish any of them.  Right now I am in the middle of a project that has grown quite a bit more intense than I originally speculated:  I'm overhauling my mom's old 1994 ParkPre Team 925R road bike.  That'll warrant a very full post when I'm finished.

A bad photograph of the bike before I started work.  I neglected to take a full side shot of the bike.  Oh well.
Taken on June 18, 2013.

     Instead I'll take this time to share a little half rant, half musing.  Recently I have been experiencing a bit of a minor, not-inherently-bad-for-me identity crisis.  In short, the duality of my interests, which normally coexist in a sort of tag-team tap-out fashion, are butting heads.
     In lamen's terms, my digital, indoor video game side is at odds with my mechanically curious and productive side.  I waste time sitting on my computer, blinking away seconds, minutes, hours and days of video games and mindless web browsing while deep inside of me a greasy fire lusts for actually doing something.  In ideal circumstances, I would just roll my chair from my sweet computer rig over to my fully equipped and expansive work area to start building a bike from nothing, and when I tired of that, I would roll back to my computer to play video games for hours on end.
     Unfortunately, the reality favors one side of that much more than the other.  I have no work area.  Beside my computer I've crammed my tool chest, which is itself crammed with most of my tools.  Beside that is a large tote box filled with my bike part collection.  That's it.  When I rarely do bike work at home, it is usually while sitting in my computer chair, with parts lying on my computer desk--my computer desk with a glass surface!  Boy, it looked cool at Wal-mart but now I am slightly regretting it.  When I need something resembling a work bench I use the linoleum floor of our kitchen.  It gets some of what I need done but it is more than anything frustrating.
     I need a shop.  I need a space, even a somewhat small space, to call my own and to fill with whatever I desire.  Tools, parts, benches, chairs, lighting and of course a decent speaker system.  I need this so bad it drives me insane sometimes.  I would be a much happier and more content person if I had access to this.  But for now, I must endure.

     And so the side of me that needs to work my hands, solve problems and build to create is stifled.  While this never makes me happy, lately it has reached a new level.  It's bothering me.  But it also has me thinking:  "What am I going to do when I do have my dream shop?"
     I definitely want to still try my hand at frame building.  Regardless of how that works out, more than anything I want to tinker.  I want to take apart and rebuild things I normally wouldn't take apart, like shifters.  I want to put parts together to create interesting or useful bikes.  Possibly I could sell these, or I could just do it for the fun and educational value of it.
     One of the big things I have learned from working as a mechanic at a "new" place (that is, a place different from where I learned most of my trade) is that there is more than one way to do something.  There are "proper" ways, "dirty" ways, shortcuts and dumb ways.  I've also begun seeing that there is more than one type of mechanic.  Some people are all about being by the book, following the rules and instructions and seeing the process through in a methodical manner.  Other people are more loose and follow the ebb and flow of the process.  Some people are all about the componentry, how top-of-the-line or new the part is, or how allegedly innovative the company claims the part to be.  Others don't really care, as long as it is functional and gets the job done.  Some people work on bikes because they are serious riders and want every last drop of performance that they can wring out of their machine.  Others, such as myself, find their interest in bicycles in the very nature of it's ingenuity.  It's a machine, that must be manufactured, cared for, and ultimately put to rest.  There is satisfaction in that, otherwise humanity wouldn't be where it is today, regardless of how awesome you may think you are with your iPhone.
     I think I know what kind of mechanic I am.  The trick is staying true to that.  The harder trick still is staying true to that and upholding the tenets of my job.  It's not so difficult that I am strained, just difficult enough to keep me on my toes.
     I just have to keep on trying to grow as a mechanic, to take on new challenges head on, so that I can add "I can't"s to the pile of "I can"s.  It is difficult for me.  I have some serious confidence problems.  My dad always made it look so easy:  nothing ever seemed to make him step away.  He built a whole house seemingly by himself for god's sake!  Sometimes I know I can do it, sometimes I feel I can't.  Duality seems to run deeply in my life.  Prior to very recently I could handle it, if not ignore it.  Nowadays it has been more than I can handle.
     Just got to keep on keeping on.