One Door Opens

This post is not so much about gaming. It is more about what skills gaming has given me over the years giving me the confidence to do other things.

I have had a bit of a problem with ones of my doors lately. Or should I say a member of my household managed to put a hole in one of them. The door is a total write off and as it was the living room door, it need to be replaced.

This would have been the thing that I would have probably turned to my dad for help with, if not getting him to do it for me. As he passed  eighteen months ago now, I no longer have that option. It was either get someone to do it for me, or do it myself.

A long time ago, my dad told me that I would never make any money from my hobby. Over the years, it has been a point of pride and of principle to prove him wrong at every opportunity. For a good ten years I managed to make my hobby, more or less self funding.

As part of doing what I have done, the hobby has taught me a lot of useful skills, some even have real world applications. Oddly the skills used painting figures are not really translatable to painting walls. I still have my dad's commentary about my ability to "cut in" when I was helping him decorate a house a few years ago.

If you have looked at my blog over the years you will have seen that I have managed to come up with a wide configuration of wooden shelves. There have been untold storage solutions. It has taken me to FabLab lately, where I have learnt a whole load of practical skills. I figured that if I could make a passable door in 1/56 scale I could probably do an okay job in 1/1 scale.

So with a whole load of second guessing, and watching YouTube, I managed to remove and renew the door. The hardest part was getting the damn door of the hinges in the first place. My god was there some gloss on that last hinge.

My point is that I have spent a lot of time second guessing myself. Perhaps a career change as a "chippy" is not on the cards for my, but my god, I did it. A few weeks ago I was helping my uncle put a concrete fence in. Not only did I do a pretty good job of it but I was able to channel a bit of my inner Grrrr to get the job done (it was get angry with concrete or hit it with a mallet) and it worked. Until then, the only concrete fence I had done had been made out of plastic I-beam and foam core.

Now I have a door that opens and closes as well...:)

The right tools help but it is all about mindset. If you can get you head into a job then you can usually do it. Anyone can learn just enough to get a job done these days, thanks to YouTube. Take some advice from me, if you think that you could probably do something, give it a go. You will probably impress yourself and maybe even someone else. If my dad is in heaven, I think he would be pretty happy with what I have managed today, although he probably wouldn't tell me.