On "multiple competencies"

I was mostly right on the furnace thing. The guy had to remove oxidation from the flame sensor but he also found one of the wires to part of the blower assembly was loose, and as he explained it, when it wasn't connecting well, the blower turn-on was either delayed or non-existent, and that caused the furnace to shut itself down. No idea what the bill will be (they send one) but the last time this happened it was $80, which I consider cheap for knowing my furnace is safe and reliable.

And no hint of "You might want to think about a new one," thank goodness. I will say one time when an uncharacteristically-chatty furnace guy came out (most of them are 20- or 30-something men who strike me as somewhat introverted and happier messing with a furnace's guts than talking to the homeowner), he happily commented, "Oh, yeah, this model (a Carrier Weathermaker 8000-series) is a good ol' warhorse; not too much can go badly wrong with it, and most of what does go wrong is an easy fix."

I like these furnace guys; I've used them for almost 10 years. First off, because they talk to me like I have a brain; they don't just figuratively pat me on the head and tell me they fixed the big, bad problem - they tell me what was wrong and what they did to fix it, and they use technical terms. Of course, I don't know if they do that for everyone; it may be that I try to diagnose the problem ahead of time or at least explain the symptoms to them, and I don't go all ZaSu Pitts in front of them. (As much as I fret and worry and obsess in my brain, I generally DON'T go openly ZaSu Pitts about a problem - running around squealing and flapping my hands around - because I get that it doesn't help and also I have found that at-least-surface calmness in the face of trouble usually means it gets fixed more satisfactorily)

I also like them because I remember back when I first hired them. I had had a terrible furnace guy who didn't know squat about my particular furnace but would not admit he wouldn't know. (Or maybe he was a crook, now that I think of it). He kept telling me the wiring was bad, the wiring into my house was bad (and I should feel bad). I called an O G and E guy to check the external wiring and he was all "It's up to code, ma'am." The electrician the bad furnace guy told me to hire never showed, after about four appointments. (Never hire a buddy of the person working for you without some kind of outside recommendation). Finally, I fired that guy and got a recommendation from someone at church.

Then, I called the guys I use now. They came out when they said they would, looked at the wiring to the furnace, pronounced it sound, and then, within fifteen minutes found the problem - a stuck valve in the blower. And fixed it.

And that actually relates, in a roundabout way, to a brief discussion some of us were having on ITFF on Ravelry. Someone commented about another person being a bit dismissive of her knitting, and I agreed that I occasionally run into people who act as though handcrafts or making stuff is somehow below them, that their lives are too important to knit. (And yet, they sit in doctor's waiting rooms, fidgeting or playing Fruit Ninja).

I don't have a problem with people not wanting to knit, not liking to knit, not knowing how....but being too "important" seems a strange reason to me. (Or substitute any kind of manual work, either craft or repairing-type, for knitting).

Like so many things, I think this comes down to how I was raised. My mom, as I've said before, sewed (a lot of my clothes as a kid were ones she made) and knitted and crocheted and baked bread and gardened. My dad helped in the garden and built stuff and did basic maintenance on the cars (changing oil, and he also once installed a manual clutch on his balky field van). It was just assumed that if you were good at one thing (academics), you would possibly be good at (and enjoy) other things. And also, that there was no honest work that was "below" a person. And that you weren't "too good" for things like cleaning your own house or mowing your own yard - oh, it was fine to hire someone to do it if you wanted to or if your physical limitations made it easier to have someone else do it (At some point, once his knees got bad, my dad started using an oil-change place). But you were never to think that there were people whose "role" it was to pick up after you, and that you were too good for that.

But another thing I've realized, with knowing how to do lots of stuff - it provides a sort of insulation for me. If I only let my work define me (and I admit, some weeks I come dangerously close to that, when I get very busy), a bad day or week at work can really color my perceptions and everything feels like failure. But if I can go home and make a loaf of bread, or knit a scarf, or even correctly diagnose a problem with my furnace, I feel more OK, like "Well, that exam I gave was a bust and I must have taught Topic X not as well as I could. But hey, fresh bread." I still feel competent. And I think having multiple competencies is important. If you define yourself too much by one thing, what if that thing is taken from you? Or what if you realize you're not that great at that thing?

There's also the matter of permanence....when I finish a quilt, I have that quilt. When I finish a pile of grading, I know there will be more next week. I really do think people who work mostly in "intangibles" (most of us, these days) need something, whether it's writing, making stuff, photography, or whatever that (a) stays done and (b) is something you can point to and go "I made that."