chat

The way you get good at it is by screwing up several times along the way. So, you’re on the way to being good!

Comrade, I'm going to assume you're young. I'm not. But I can tell you as the handiest person I know, I got here because I never stop fucking around with things over the years. Some of my tools have chunks melted out of them from accidentally shorting a car battery. I've skinned my knuckles, stabbed, electrocuted, burnt, cut, glued, bumped, and bruised myself, and I expect I'll do it again some day but hopefully less often. The difference between us is time spent being stubborn about wanting to know how things work and a lot of times needing to save money. Don't get down on yourself, you changed your battery and that's more than many people will do.

Keep fiddling with things, you'll get there. But also, take your time to think through hazards, it makes it a lot easier. Don't ever rush handy/repair/maintenance work.

You're not stupid and you shouldn't feel stupid. You succeeded at something that most people wouldn't attempt. That is a skill, and you should feel proud.

I am exceptionally mechanically inclined. I get shit innately; machines and stuff tend to just make sense to me at a glance. But, that's not "being smart" and not being that way isn't "stupid". It's just a weird lucky quirk.

Not trying to toot my own horn, just providing background for the rest of this. I've fixed a lot of stuff for a lot of people, and helped a lot of people figure out how to fix their own stuff.

"Shit, I should be able to fix this" is SO FAR AHEAD of a good deal of the populace. Acknowledging a problem, analyzing that problem, determining that it can be repaired, and deciding that you can repair it yourself are all HUGE STEPS above the baseline. There are a lot of stages in the development of "handiness", and you're well on your way.

I know folks who haven't even internalized "broken things can be fixed". "I need a new TV" because an HDMI cable fell out. "I bought a replacement stand mixer" because one screw was loose. "I had to buy a new car" because the seat adjuster broke. These are ACTUAL STATEMENTS FROM ACTUAL PEOPLE. There's a type of learned helplessness that comes from folks with money who never really faced basic hardships, where the immediate response is "just throw enough money at something to remove the problem". Seat is broken -> car is broken -> buy car. No signal -> TV is broken -> buy TV. Your life, and I assume any other hexbear's, pushed you past this stage.

Then there's "someone else can figure this out". Acknowledging that a problem exists, understanding that other folks know stuff about things, and asking for help. This feels like the general default level of "handiness": I have a problem, someone else can do some magic to make the problem go away. Staying at this level indicates a lack of curiosity, in my opinion.

Next tier, there's "I wonder why this broke/I wonder why this works". Seeing something broken, doing some research, calling in a pro with a specific problem, watching them work to see what they do. This is the difference between "my sink is broken" and "hey the faucet leaks at the valve stem when I run the hot water". It requires putting in actual effort to think and poke.

Up from that is tinkering. "Fuck, it's already broken, what's the worst that could happen". Sometimes you fix things, sometimes you break them more. The willingness and ability to just take shit apart because you can probably put it back together in the same state. Hitting this stage makes you officially stand out from the crowd. This is something weirdos do. "Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey" will take you far (this being the mnemonic to remember which way to turn a screw--clockwise tightens, counterclockwise loosens)

Then there's actual repair ability. You're here! Congratulations! You knew your car had a dead battery. You tried a patch (jumping), no luck. You decided you needed a new battery. You successfully installed a new battery, with some complications along the way. The next time will be faster. There was one time my car wouldn't start at work, and I knew the battery was on its last legs, so I called up my partner to snag a battery and deliver it and a socket set. I swapped it in the parking lot while some coworkers--professional engineers--gathered, stared, and actually said "Wait, you know how to change a car battery? You can just swap in a new one?" Even among successful, skilled, smart folks, anything under a car's hood was magic that required a specialist. You are not "stupid" for struggling with it, you're a fucking genius by my standards.

Above that, would be "good at X". I can swap a battery, I can change a tire, I can change a headlight, I can change a fuse, I can change my own oil -> good at cars. I can reformat a computer, I can install an OS, I can install a drive, I can fix the Wi-Fi, I can run Ethernet -> good at computers. This is where other folks see you as a magician. They start coming to you with their problems. From your point of view, you'll still feel "stupid" because you need to look up tutorials for things and do research to figure stuff out. But to the layman, you're a genius who does the impossible.

Lastly, there's the true masters of their craft. When you pull your car into the mechanic's lot, and they just walk out and say "hey, your timing belt's off" before you've even parked. That's years and years and years of navigating the previous stages--and a hell of a lot of confidence.

Please do not feel dumb when fixing something goes poorly. The willingness to make the attempt, and the ability to reflect on it afterward are tremendous skills that deserve cultivation.

what stopped me from being electrocuted but I didn't feel a thing

Sounds like the electricity was going through the wrench and not your hand. The real dangerous electrocutions are where you touch negative with one hand, positive with another, and the electricity goes across your heart on its way to complete the circuit.

But anyway as a certified handy guy who has done installs and modifications of all kinds professionally all of this has happened to me before too. The only way to get good at it is to do it every day, and most people just aren't doing that.

There are less and less things in the world one can even interface with properly, so there's less and less ways to even be "handy". You were born in the wrong generation to be handy

I've never replaced a car battery and wouldn't know how to begin, so you're ahead of me.

Being handy isn't something you just are, it's a skill built up by not getting killed while trying to be handy. First time I tried to fix a plug socket I forgot to turn off the supply at the fuse box and accidentally shorted the wires. First time I tried to fix a broken headphone wire I just ended up with a mess of wire and solder. First time I tried to replace a light socket I found that the building had been wired before current wire colour standardisation and had to call 3 different people to find out what to do.

Today you made at least 3 avoidable mistakes, but you also successfully changed your car battery, and now if you need to do it again you can avoid those mistakes. You might have injured yourself and your pride, but you tried and you succeeded. You can do it again. You are now handy.

You didn't feel anything because it's only 12V. Be happy it wasn't worse and learn from it!

I put a comment up here the other day describing my first disaster of a brake job. The most important part of that whole process was that I learned from it.

I bet next time you have to do a battery, you will remember NOT to let a wrench short across the two terminals, right? Yeah, you might feel like a dunce right this moment, but you are learning. This is how you get better at being handy. It's not some magical knack that folks are born with, we do it wrong once, remember that mistake, and next time we do a little better.

As someone who's fairly handy (but sucks at lots of other things ofc), the only way you get better is by doing shit and giving yourself a little space to fuck up. I did all kinds of dumb shit to get to where I am, and I'm still not nearly as good at design as my older friend, or as good with cars as my mechanic buddy, or as good at following through on regular maintenance as my neurotypical friends.

I've broken off captive nuts internal to the frame of a car, I've glued in a stubborn alternator bolt, I've tried to cut steel chain with a metal chop saw and wrecked the blade. I've seen someone set off a sawstop, I've driven a car with no brakes like 30 miles to the nearest town, I've vaporized the tips off my multimeter leads by testing the voltage of a 40v battery with them in the 10A position, I've bent or broken plenty of (mostly crappy) tools, snapped the heads clean off 100 rusty bolts, rounded them on 50 more. I've shocked myself with 120v by working on a powered-on rack mount ethernet switch with it perched on my lap, and then continued to work on it on my lap and did it again. I could go on but the point is everyone does dumb shit sometimes you just live and learn and next time you take on an even bigger project thats even more out of your comfort zone, and the more you do it the better you get.

shit, half of being seen as "handy" is just confidence. If you tell someone "wellll I watched a youtube video and I think I could fix your plumbing issue, probably" people are gonna think "this person doesn't know shit, nice of them to offer at least but I better get a real plumber", but if you have absolutely no idea what you're doing but some blind confidence and you go "oh yeah I could fix that for sure. a plumbers gonna cost you a fortune, why don't we just do it ourselves?", you might well get seen as handy even if you just improvise and watch some youtube (not saying blind confidence is the way to go but don't sell yourself short or assume that "handy" people are all actually competent

I've made many mistakes when fixing my own cars so take it from me it happens. There's this time I put a battery that was too tall in my sister's car because we didn't have the money for the proper battery, shit make sparks with the hood as it welded it. I fixed that with some electrical tape insulating it. There's this most recent mistake where I bored a hole into my new radiator, fixed it with some jb weld few days ago.

Among my friends and family they see me as some sort of mechanic but the sheer volume of fucks ups is pretty massive. Everything runs at least and not being a trained professional I'm doing alright all things considered so be easy on yourself. You didn't get majorly hurt or anything and you learned some important lessons as long as you don't do them twice you're good

Some months back I replaced the alternator in my vehicle. I've been working on cars on and off since I was a teenager in the last century, but I mostly get by from watching videos and reading the manuals. So I watch a bunch of videos, get the alternator out of my vehicle, and then proceed to get the new replacement stuck for like 3 hours when trying to put it in. See, all the videos I watched had a hard time of getting their alternator out, so they had to removing a bracing bar. But not me, I twisted it right through the gap, LIKE A PRO! So when I'm watching these videos and they're all having no problem getting it back in, I'm pulling my hair out wondering what the heck is happening when it suddenly occurs to me how I screwed myself and that damn the bar needs to come out. lol, what should have been a few hour job took me two days. LIKE A PRO!

We all have our fields of knowledge

Do I know anything about car maintenance? No

Do I know how to cook a variety of delicious and nutritious food? Yes

don't be so hard on yourself, most handy people either learn from someone experienced, or the hard way like you did just now

Glad you didn't shock yourself and give you a pat on the back for that. I don't even know my way around cars.

This is me playing mysummercar. Making mistakes is part of leveling up the skill cape with most things in life so don't worry

You know more than me. I wish I just stuck to bicycles.

I dunno how people learned 30+ years ago... families passing along info, friends maybe. nobody in my family knows shit, except calling whoever has money and getting them to throw money at poor people until the problem is no longer present.

I left home like about 20 years ago and became curious how to keep my shit from falling apart when some critical machine, appliance or mechanism stopped working and I only had $30 to my name. learned stuff from coworkers, helped them work on their own orojects as an extra pair of hands in exchange for their knowledge. once YouTube became a thing, that's been real good.

I took some adult Ed. "shop" type of class at a local agriculture school. that was riveting. I still watch YouTube videos for stuff though.

its a real pain to sort through all the AI slop though nowadays.

I think as we settle into imperial decline and become intermittently disconnected from various supply chains.... having curiosity and an attitude for tinkering is going to be crucial as communities contract into some kind of neo-mannorialist/resiliency-based whatever the fuck.

my family still doesn't know shit about fuck and they all seem to refuse to learn anything, treating me like I'm some kind of eccentric throwback for trying to muddle my way through problems and understand mechanisms.

I am perennially disappointed and frustrated by their incurious approach to the world.

I find people who want to at least try to understand a problem and explore their DIY options to be kindred spirits and fast friends.

I agree with everyone about failing in order to grow, but also you can also look up tutorials on YT and see how to do it before trying it. Learning from your own mistakes is important, but learning from the mistakes of others is even better

It sounds like you did well? Stop being so hard on yourself. Also you won't electrocute yourself from a car battery unless something went much much more wrong.

At some point a few years back I decided that if something can be done by regular people, I can learn how to do it. Every individual skill starts with several mistakes that would be obvious to a professional, but I'm not one, or at least wasn't. We have an opportunity that no one in history had, though. We have the ability to learn anything from real masters with a simple search. Forums and YouTube have endless information from every kind of craftsman, mechanic, programmer, designer, and engineer willing to give anyone the great advantage of being able to skip the majority of dumb mistakes we would all make. In the last two years I've learned welding, tiling, server programming, flooring, building code, gun making, cabinet building, and anything else that arose and needed done. I just finish milling a pile of rough boards into lumber before checking Lemmy.

You have to start somewhere, and there will always be mistakes, but if the car could end up being an ongoing problem, you just found a reason to learn mechanics.