Plain and simple

Some days you have plans and some days those plans get thrown out of the window entirely. This happened to me recently where I wanted to organise my toolboxes the way I like them to be. This resulted in me sitting in the middle of the floor with a shit ton of tools, screws, nuts, bolts, bits and files dotted on the floor all around me while I then got entirely sidetracked by my wood plane which was screaming at me when I took it out.

_{Let me just preface this by saying that I detest the feeling of rust on my fingers. It makes me cringe. It's a tactile thing.}

The blade hadn't been oiled for some a very long time and was covered in rust. So instead of putting everything back without tending to it, I ended up disassembling it (adding more bits and pieces to the ring of stuff around me), took out my sanding block and got rid of the rust (while internally squirming constantly) and oiled it before putting it all back together. I tucked the blade in so that it doesn't come into contact with anything else in my toolbox.

Safety first!

I'm pretty good at cleaning things after using them, but this one had been lent out and when I got it back, it hadn't been cleaned or oiled. It was still covered in wood cuttings. This was well over a year ago and I had put it aside to "do it later" which didn't happen until now. This was my own failing at maintenance and not being diligent. I paid for it in time and effort to get it back to some semblance of shiny again.

My father tried to instill things in me like returning things to their rightful place in the workshop, something I was really bad at when I was a kid. He didn't do methodical maintenance of his tools so whenever I borrowed one, I was always rather disgusted at the amount of rust and grime on them. It annoyed me immensely and I think that somehow that repeated experience ingrained a more maintenance orientated approach at looking after tools if you want them to last well. It also resulted in my abhorrence to the feeling of rust on my skin and I'm pretty sure that this would be a good (if not excellent) method of torture for anyone with this kind of tactile thing. It's not really at a phobia level or anything, I just don't like it. I like the smell of metal being cut though or welded which is also weird, right?

I did managed to get everything more organised after a few hours of sorting things and discarding shit that I will never use (like all the little odd extra bits that you have left over after putting together flat pack furniture). I just let my mind drift in and out while I did this all. It was nice in a way. Cathartic at some level. Something I don't do often. Even the music in the background kind of just disappeared and before I knew it, there was nothing left in the circle around me to sort through or put back.

I realised somewhere in that little tinkering-thinkering session that life is exactly like this too. We are like this. If you don't keep things orderly and maintain things properly, they rust and corrode. If you don't look after your mind, body, heart and soul, they too, will decay. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Sure, you can sand the rust off, but the damage is still there.

What's the point? Look after the things you care about.