D(on’t)DIY

By Samantha Bryan

The year is 2020.
People are debating whether to put their lives in either Donald Trump or Kanye West’s hands. Sex work and food service are no longer viable apocalypse plans. Cats and plants are the new leaders of the underground free world. Your favorite astrologist is the new weathercaster. Oregon Trail was not a game; it was a training simulator.

At least there’s one thing I know for certain:

I have no clue what the %$^& I’m doing.

It’s taken me 34 years to admit that, and 2020 has been my reckoning.

As a child, I was cursed with the perception that I was gifted. I was one of those tiny jerks that excelled at most everything I loved and tried. To be fair, there wasn’t much range in what I attempted, because by 6 years old my main activity was ballet. So pretty much my goals were to be the best dancer in my class and to beat Nolan Gagne at times-tables and basket weaving.

Goals met. For the record.

This false confidence, combined with my ignorance around white privilege, allowed me to go into the world believing that I could be great at everything I tried. For the most part the world responded in ways that supported this self perception. What I hadn’t developed, however, were the skills to emotionally regulate when I sucked at something, or the tools to work hard and build up to success.

Y’know, like, normal skills that are just part of a well-adjusted human experience.

As a kid who was only allowed to have one hyper-focused activity, my adulthood was the beginning of my experimentation journey. When you think you have the potential to be good at anything, you will try everything. When you realize you’re terrible at it because a.) it’s not your gift, and/or b.) you skipped a million steps because you just wanted to get to the gratification part, former gifted children like myself will usually just give up and walk away, uninterested in learning more or finishing the task. And no, we probably won’t ask for help because we’re too prideful. When you’re used to being “perfect”, and suddenly you’re not, your brain doesn’t know how to compute, so it simply throws the whole thing in the (figurative and literal) garbage and moves on.
However, there is magic in that, albeit unpopular. I have had a very eclectic, adventurous, highly curious life, full of random opportunities and ridiculous stories. I’ve also learned that I have a bunch of cool random skills that I never would have otherwise known. My philosophy is that you just have to try. You don’t know what you’re capable of, or allergic to, until you just damn try.

Experimenting constantly outside of my wheelhouse has been an amazing journey. It’s taught me the importance of humility, teamwork, and open-mindedness. Yet despite this, I maintain a bit of a fool’s mind. Unfortunately 2020 doesn’t pity this fool, and one of the hardest lessons I’ve personally been forced to face is knowing when not to DIY.

Ack, I know. But we’re in the quarantine age of DIY everything! We’re all out here baking bread and becoming master porch gardeners, making watches out of old socks and pine needles, whatever. And I’m here for it! I believe that the immediate gratification, fast-paced society we currently live in has robbed most of us of the ability to know just how uniquely and diversely brilliant and capable each of us are. Slowing down and turning to self-reliance in these ways is a remarkable opportunity to not only be more curious and celebratory about ourselves, but also to check our relationships with the environment, our carbon footprints, and excessive consumerism. But here’s what all the DIY Instagram influencers don’t want to tell you in their tutorials:

No, “everyone” can’t do “it”.
We’re not going to be good at everything DIY.
Literally no one is good at everything.

And what a boring world that would be if everything was good at all the same things! All of our conversations would just be, “omg I knooooooooooowwwwwww.” The end.

No thanks. I still believe that most of my friends have superpowers, and I’d like to keep it that way.

For my own pride and self-preservation, I offer you a shortened list of DIY projects I’ve tried over the last few years that ended horribly:

Taxidermy
Taxidermy again
Sculpture
Magic tricks
Youtube pole tricks
Trying to create my own baking recipes
Treating my cat “homeopathically”
Treating myself “homeopathically”
Sewing dresses by hand
Remodeling my kitchen

I’m available if you feel the need to commiserate over any of these.

The beauty of screwing up a DIY project is that with the right mentality, it’s a learning opportunity. Through my failed experiments, I have learned the following:

Just because it looks easy doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. A professional is trained to know exactly what they’re doing so you don’t have to worry.

If I’m not self-loathing or bored at the end of a failed DIY project, and I’m genuinely curious about knowing where I went wrong, then I’ve probably discovered a new passion, or at least an area of interest. Great! I might follow up by taking some (online) classes, join a forum, and see where it leads me. If nothing else, I’ll probably make new friends in the process.

Your interests could be someone else’s livelihood. This is not meant to make you jealous. They’re simply operating from a different place.

This last point is the most important to me, especially right now during a pandemic where millions of people are struggling to support themselves, their families, and their businesses. While I am all the way supportive of all of us experimenting and exploring our dormant gifts and skills, I also believe in helping to put food on the tables of independent artists, craftfolx and business owners who will be able to make my dreams come true without a tremendous waste of money and materials. Despite how it feels, most of us are not pioneers braving the frontier, making soup from the tree bark out front and burning old show posters for warmth. Admitting DIY defeat for most of us creates an opportunity for the professionals to keep their lights on and pay their rent. We don’t have to –and quite frankly shouldn’t– do it all ourselves. Instead, let’s DIT(ogether): advertise for each other, trade products and services, and spread that little bit of wealth we have around.

So then, what’s the line between when to and when not to DIY? That’s ultimately for you to decide. Know thyself, first and foremost. But the most standard questions I ask are:

Is this endangering or notably inconveniencing myself and others?

Do I hate this?

Am I too bored to complete the project responsibly? Will this turn into more shame piles of garbage in the corner of my bedroom or living room?

Am I wasting more resources trying to make this happen than a professional would? (environmental awareness)

Will I just end up buying this twice, or more? (once for my own mess, a second time trying to fix it, a third time having to hire someone else to do it)

Self-reliance is character building, but individualism is breaking us down as a society. Try everything at least once, but know that outsourcing is not a sign of weakness. Look at it instead as a form of interconnectedness and sustainability. Ask a professional. Request that commission. And don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself. Take a few minutes to bond with some pinterest fail memes, and then head on over to your favorite Patreon or Etsy site for some help.

Samantha Bryan is a co-editor of Quaranzeen, performance artist, filmmaker and activist, currently currently living in Providence, RI. She is a proud member of award-winning Boston troupes The Slaughterhouse Society and The Lipstick Criminals, and the producer of The Scarlet Tongue Project: a documentary film and art collective exploring the social taboo of anger through art, culture, and intersectional feminism. To learn more, visit the project’s site at thescarlettongueproject.org