On fixing taps, and fatherhood

Hello readers — I have another major Fernsage update to share before we get to this week's dad essay:

I want your commonplace book to feel truly yours. You can now customize the theme of your book, including the accent, background color, roundedness, and fonts. If the price is stopping you from trying Fernsage, email me!

On fixing taps, and fatherhood

My father once drilled into a water pipe while installing a new rack in his storeroom. He calmly turned off the water supply, hacked off a piece of the wall, replaced the leaking water pipe, and plastered the wall hole. I remember thinking: Oh, you can just do that?

Another time, we fixed a clogged toilet together. We used a plumber's snake, upgraded with an electric drill, to loosen whatever was stuck. Then, we picked out the debris (well, things covered with shit) with our hands.

Oh, you can just do that?

Since becoming a father myself, I have been thinking about how my father can fix anything in the house. Building a room, changing an LED strip, and pretty much anything about cars. He has been running his car workshop for almost 40 years.

Will my children think the same about me?

Nowadays, hiring a handyman takes only a few taps. Fixing things myself makes less and less sense... until I realized:

Fixing things is more than getting them fixed. It's about knowing I can.

After I moved into my own place, I had a leaking kitchen tap. While I used to rely on my father, I was determined to deal with this myself. So, I went to a hardware store, bought a new kitchen tap, and replaced it. I proudly told my dad. He looked at me and said, "You could have just changed the cartridge." I didn't even know there was a cartridge inside! Since then, I have fixed loose taps, blown cove lights, and a leaking bidet spray. Sometimes, I do small maintenance, like washing the air-conditioner filters. But however small, it's about being comfortable with opening up the appliances rather than assuming only "professionals" can touch them. Where I'm not as experienced as my dad, I turn to YouTube and Gemini for help.

As a cyclist, I also learned to replace several bike parts myself and to bring spares and tools when I head out. When I'm on the road alone with a flat, I can get upset at the abrupt end of my ride and flag a cab to ferry me home... or I can just replace that damn tube myself and continue cycling!

It's the same when it comes to running a business, especially doing it solo. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman said, "Starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down." I launched Fernsage about two months ago. It wasn't perfect, but I knew I had to put it out there first and then fix and improve it along the way. (So if you want to record ideas, quotes, and information for later use, please try Fernsage and share your feedback!) Then, there's also the small stuff. Just this week, my Gmail stopped working, and I couldn't receive emails. So, I dug into the DNS and realized I missed a step when transferring my domain between providers and switching name servers. With the help of Gemini and Google, I fixed it.

Recently, my toilet lock broke. I removed a few screws and took out the lock but didn't know how to approach it. My father popped by for dinner, so I got him to help. He didn't know if he could fix it. But he took it apart anyway. I watched in horror but reasoned, at worst, I could get someone to replace the entire door.

He carefully disassembled the lock down to its individual components so that he knew how to put them back together. He eventually discovered a tiny component with two little forks had broken. It wasn't something he could easily fix right there and then, so he suggested I call up some hardware stores for a replacement lock. A few days later, when I told him the stores didn't carry this custom lock, he figured he could weld the pieces back together himself. He did that at his workshop and came back to fix the lock.

That's when I understood. He couldn't fix everything. He just wasn't afraid to try.

My father never sat me down to teach me any of this. He just went about trying, failing, learning, fixing. I learned from watching him. One fix after another. For more than 30 years.

I can't fix things as well as he can. But if my children see me try enough, at home and for my business, maybe they will pick it up, too.