Hobbies in big letters

I don’t really have any hobbies, having fallen into the class trap of the working creative that is essentially a pile of bills and immediate needs placed gently over a hastily piled patch of grass. Most things I do, I do because I need to eat and other annoying things, and it leaves me very little time to consider what I do other than work. Even, and often especially because my job is very fun. I get paid to write and talk and give my opinion, and I am grateful for it. But everything I do is for work, and sometimes even fun can drag through the days.

I come by this addiction to work honestly. When I worked in skilled trades, first as a glazier and then the years I was an automatic door technician, work was most of all I did. Hours that become days that all bleed together.

Now, every year when I write my goals in a notebook, I put HOBBIES in big letters, as if font size and ink saturation was my problem all this time. I tell friends over coffee in the afternoon, as I try to stop my hand from reflexively checking my phone for notifications, that I want to get back into hobbies. Even though I don’t really know what they would be. Knitting maybe. Or finally learning how to play chess.

I never grew up with chess, my uncle taught me to play crib when he taught me how to drink coffee — black and bitter and strong — on a brown tabletop in his aging motorhome parked in our driveway when I was young. My uncle was a whittler, but not by trade. He crafted intricate cowboy boots and western ephemera out of wood, even when his eyes started to fail him, even when his hands shook. He could take a block and turn it into something beautiful, right until there was no more beauty left for him to create. Cards always suited me better than chess and board games, but there are fewer crib players these days.

My old iPod has been lingering in my thoughts though. The 80gb 6th generation I purchased brand new when iPods were still brand new. I believe it’s 10 years old, but it could be any measure of time. The last iPod in a long line of purchased iPods that are interned in a landfill somewhere now, along with so many other memories. I got on board with iPods late because I held on to my firm belief that the MiniDisc would be forever, like the family on our that block committed to their BetaMax player far beyond its shelf life. The MiniDisc, like all good and beautiful things, died. The last frontier of physical media, slain by the disposable nature of digital, reliable WiFi, and free MP3 cards swiped from Starbucks counters.

So, I decided that I would repair my old iPod, which hasn’t shown signs of life in years. Even after trying to plug it into my laptop many times over the years, it flickered only slightly and refused to return to light. I thought it was dead, and I knew it was dead, but I didn’t want it to go. It’s lived on display on a shelf in my office, next to the clear-case GameBoy with burned out battery leads and a faulty screen that was brand new when I bought it in 1995.

I have searched on forums in my spare time, made notes on the part numbers and tools needed. I scoured eBay and various drop shippers, bookmarked pages of repair guides. Lingered on shopping carts but held myself back from spending a minor amount of money on nothing. This nothing could be food. Nothing could be a cup of perfectly black and bitter coffee. What right do I have to do something for nothing?

Funny how when I was actively drinking, spending money was just a perk of the trade. I would wake up to shipping confirmations and eBay searches. My former partner once stopped me in the middle of a bidding war, where I was intent on purchasing a used but still running El Camino in South Carolina. I protested only slightly, and then woke up the next day on the floor.

But now spending money feels frivolous, as if I don’t deserve to do something that isn’t surviving. My iPod has lived a life same as me, and doesn’t it deserve to survive too? It lived in work trucks over the years, tethered to the stereo through USB cables that always seemed to go missing, and soundtracked endless hours of travel on otherwise lonely highways. It provided comfort on flights to say my final goodbyes to lost loved ones, and in my pocket walking home in the early morning after long benders. There were nights when I was drinking that I would cross the barrier between exuberance and destructive despair, and would often sneak away from the bar to walk home, even in the dead of a Yukon winter. It sat in my pocket when I arrived at the bridge that delivered me home, as I stared into the swift water of the river and wondered for a second how it felt to hit the cold water. It soundtracked perfect memories of mornings with fresh coffee and the rising sun. Suddenly, it felt wrong to let so many memories sit lifeless and forgotten on a shelf.

It took weeks, and a royalties' cheque, to finally pull the trigger on placing an order. First for a basic repair tool kit, with precision screwdrivers, spudgers, pry bars, and tiny tweezers. I used to have tool boxes that weight a hundred pounds just as easily as they weighed a ton, but I haven’t had need for nearly as many tools in the years since I stopped working with my hands. I’m content to have the basics required for home repairs lingering in the house, but to be honest, it felt nice to buy tools for frivolous purposes.

I bought a replacement battery for my iPod, a new click wheel, and a replacement shell and back case. Where my old iPod was black and vibrant, like a perfect cup of coffee, it had become scratched and damaged in the years it bounced around the dashboard of a work truck, or buried in the bottom of a backpack and kicked under a seat to prepare for takeoff and landing. I purchased a yellow replacement shell, which I have recently come to understand is one of my favourite colours, after noticing a pantone trend among recently purchased things. Notebooks and pens and things that are all shades of yellow litter my desk and areas where I live and leave things behind. Sometimes, favourite things happen accidentally, that’s just the way of it.

I assumed that this would be all I needed. Repair my iPod and get this out of my system. An idea constantly begging for my attention, growing like a vine around the walls of me. With careful movements, I pried the case of my iPod open and learned exactly why every guide tells you it’s a pain in the ass. It’s because it’s a pain in the ass. But I got it open, and saw the skeleton of my iPod, perfectly intact and lifeless. I removed the battery leads, tested ribbon cables and minor connections. Inspected soldering to ensure all things were clean and connected and ready to return to life.

It reminded me of working on automatic doors. How I would arrive to a store with doors that presented an endless array of problems. Sometimes they were stuck open and letting the cold air in, others they were ghosting and swinging open and shut in random shuttering movements. Despite their difficulties, the inside always looked the same. Wires and relays and all things exactly as they are when everything works perfectly. The process becomes slow, methodical elimination. Take each part that is supposed to work and test it in sequence, and wait until an issue emerges.

The new battery worked in my iPod, but the hard drive was spinning and clicking with an unwelcome noise. The old screen was half-dead, and even with a new battery it was difficult to see anything on its face. I pulled everything out and cleaned and replaced it one by one. Testing each new part as I connected it back to the logic board to ensure it worked. I ordered a new screen, and then another when the first replacement didn’t work. I sourced the problem with the hard drive, and resolved a minor issue with the battery lead to the main board. And then suddenly, with a button press, the screen turned on bright as new filled snow, and let me know that everything was working perfectly.

There was always a moment when fixing a door, where salvation seemed impossible, that the issue might never be found, and a solution was an unlikely pipe dream. I would stare exhausted into the void of parts and grease and dust and wonder what it was all for. And then a wire would be missing, or a lead pulled away from a relay, and when everything was made just right the door would work, as if it had always been this way. The pride and satisfaction I derived from solving the minor nuisances of intricate systems was immeasurable, and it’s the one thing I miss from the life I have left behind. Writing and speaking for a living is a dream job, and I am so thankful and grateful for this work, but the way fixing broken things with my hands feels is irreplaceable. This is something inherited from my father, who would prefer to fix a tool or broken thing rather than throw it away.

I emerged from my office, my desk littered with tools, screws, and old screens, and proudly displayed my newly revived iPod to Lysh, unable to contain my beaming pride. She smiled, and congratulated me on the triumphant conclusion of my weeks-long parade of new parts arriving in the mail and fruitless troubleshooting. She is very polite in putting up with me exclaiming can you believe this thing works again very new five minutes on the clock.

I’m not deluding myself by believing I’m suddenly going to use an iPod as my daily driver, but it lives and works once more all the same, and my life is better for it. It has replaced my phone on my early morning dog walk, and it’s a delightful return to the past. My companion back with me, as I shuffle half-awake around the block. There in my pocket, a perfect little brick without WiFi and notifications yearning for my attention, rebuilt with skills of the past, that reminds me of all the days we survived, and all those we have yet to put behind us.

I've got a new round of my column in Paste Magazine this month, about The New Radicals, the importance of having a shitty job, and the time my boss called me a piece of shit, read it here

Don't forget you can buy my book, The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman wherever you buy books! It's even available as an audiobook, that is read by me!