If this year has taught me anything, it’s how incapable I am.
Smashed away in Harlem, there’s very little I was obligated to do for myself. The super fixed the sink. The subway took me down. The laundromat, the deliverymen, the corner coffee stand—hundreds of hands doing the work I never did.
In March, the hands that made the city easy disappeared. Spaces felt tighter as we walked further apart. And on top of it all, we adopted a stress-as-fuck (technical term) cattle dog who’d sooner bite the balls off our Super than to have the sink fixed.
We were lucky to have an apartment with a backyard, but our dreams couldn’t survive outside our imagination. The sunflowers I planted were shit on by the street cats. The grill we obsessed over ran out of gas and we were too dumb (or lazy (or both)) to get it replaced. The dog we called our “Adventure Pup” wouldn’t leave the front door.
In an August rush, we left the city for Chris’ hometown in suburban Michigan. The space allowed our suffocated dreams to breathe, and (thankfully) our dog relaxed a bit too. In many ways, life is significantly easier with a backyard, a dishwasher, and a car, but I still couldn’t shake how incapable I had felt all year.
This coming new year, without space or time as an excuse, I am determined to start asking, “How do you do that?” How do you do that tile? How do you do a fancy cocktail? How do you do an oil change? How do you do cpr (not to be dramatic)?
How does anyone do any of this shit? I aim to find out, with the aim to boil it down to something digestible. For the starters of this world. For those of us who gained a college education but never learned how to use a screw driver.
But also to ask, how do you do _________? Please help me.