Somebody did a nice job on this one.
How about something completely harmless, peaceful, and relaxing?
Like putting together a model car.
Between us my brother and I must’ve assembled 100 model cars when we were kids. I have no mechanical aptitude, but I was surprised when I found my old toy-car skills helped me assemble a new computer monitor. Learn all you can: you never know what’ll come in handy someday.
I wonder how well I’d do if I had another crack at assembling my model T. rex skeleton. Maybe this time it wouldn’t fall apart.
It would be hard to over express how much I like this post on your blog. As I wrote in my 2018 comment, I am, among other things, a licensed aircraft mechanic and the skills I learned in the nearly two years of training involved have served me well in many other areas of like, including my career as an IT professional, and the repairs and adjustments I make on my guitars.
Long before I got an Airframe and Powerplant license, I learned a lot from building model cars. I credit a lot of my affinity for mechanical and technical subjects to the experience gained when I built models, as a kid. Beyond that, models were great for the imagination. I built models of customs and hot rods (mostly hot rods) and expressed my creative urges, in 1/25th scale plastic.
Strangely, when I became an adult (some would argue that I’ve never become an adult), my ability to finish a model car vanished. I have the skills, but just can’t sustain the interest required to finish a model, anymore.
There is a YouTube channel called hpiguys Workshop, (Happy Guy’s Workshop), by a very nice fellow that builds models on camera, with pleasant background music and some very upbeat, encouraging, narration, while he explains his work. I recommend this channel, heartily.
I wonder what happened to all our model cars. I’ll have to ask my brother.
I had some great ones, but I imagine my parents probably threw them out.
My father built and modified car models as a young man, and won awards. He only had one left by the time I was old enough to appreciate it, but it was a beauty: green metal flake paint, he glued white corduroy to the seats as “upholstery”, cut open the trunk door and built a “trunk” and even made a little roll for the tiny car tools, all in a display case to keep it pristine. I believe he still has the trophy but he gave my nephew the car.
I built an AH-64 Apache model but that was pretty much the extent of it. I went looking for a P-3 model, since they were the birds that I worked on while I served in the US Navy, but never found a good one so… meh).
Models are fun! I wonder why I don’t do them anymore. Probably because I’ve run out of space in our apartment.