I fucking hate DIY. It’s utter pish. It’s built on this notion that you will eventually enjoy the fruits of your labour. I’ve never gotten it. Now, I don’t doubt that some of us out there get this. Same as a runner’s high, some of us get it, but within DIY circles, as indeed within those who won’t shut the fuck up about running, there is this notion that experience is universal. It is not.
In my twenty years designing and building things, I have designed big things for industry, been involved in the build, and never got any satisfaction from a project. Many of the things I have designed are still out in the world. Some prevent refineries from exploding, and other things are control systems that make process plants tick. Some of the things I have worked on are still out in the civilian world, still operating a decade or so later. Like the runner’s high, though, I have just never felt satisfied with it. I have just felt glad it was over.
As with Artifice, I got zero satisfaction from its completion, instead finding myself cringing when I read passages from the novel. This has left me wondering why so many folk don’t get that experience is not universal. Am I happy that I have accomplished things in my life? Sure, but my children's accomplishments bring me infinitely more joy than anything I have done. Hell, even the achievements of friends and relatives make me feel better than what I have achieved. This knowledge brings me little joy in life, but what it has never done is make me think that our experiences are in any way universal.
In writing, the only thing that has come close to giving me any sense of satisfaction was the Sneer Review of Thatcher. Part of me thinks that was simply getting something off my chest after several decades of it laying a hot lunch on there. I don’t know. This whole line of thought has me examining whether I’m a terminally dour fucker (might be), if nothing is ever good enough (possibly), or if this is just the personal cost of ambition? Have any of you ever felt like this? Is this the result of modern life or of working for a big corporation? Is this a sign of depression? I don’t feel depressed. I genuinely don’t know. The one thing I know this mode of thought has gifted me, though, is not to be that cunt boring everyone to death about something that is seemingly universal in order to nag them into buying running shoes and a fitness band or starting to entirely remodel my house looking for a DIYer’s high.
Sometimes, if someone says they don’t get it, just move on with your life and stop being an annoying prick.