It’s not that I am complaining, nor am I saying my work is harder than anyone else’s, but there is one aspect of handyman work that I find to be increasingly taxing, and that is . . . multitasking.
Back when I was a union musician, we had a system where you got paid 50% extra over scale for “doubling” on a second instrument. For example, when the flute players all stand up and play their piccolos at the end of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” they are, in, in musician parlance, “doubling.” They only do it for 16 bars but they get 50% more money than everyone else, for the whole show. Other examples, a tuba player will double on baritone horn, or an oboe player will double on english horn.
Handyman work has a lot of doubling in it, but it’s different, it’s more like playing the Brahms Violin Concerto and then running over to play tuba in Pictures at an Exhibition– or running across the street to operate a forklift. Sounds simple enough on paper but it requires an entirely different mindset.
And then there is a whole lot of production/project management.
For example, on a recent job I had to paint a water damaged ceiling over a tub. Ok, I need a ladder, I need a dropcloth, the painting pole, a roller (which depth of roller nap to buy??), a can of stain blocker . . . THEN, once done with that, I had to swap out a light fixture, and for that, ok, need a ladder, but I also need the new fixture, my multimeter, my voltage detector, my circuit tracer . . . flute players are switching to another instrument that’s almost identical, just smaller, while I am having to enter entirely new dimensions. AND they get more money.
I also call this working in multimedia. It is a major grinding of mental gears.
I envy electricians because all they do all day is deal with electrical stuff. Their work is challenging but at least they don’t have the distraction of suddenly working on a broken window, a broken deadbolt, a bad downspout, or a stuck drawer in an antique dental cabinet. I know how to do many things, but that knowledge is all stored on a hard drive in my brain and it takes a little time to call it up to random access memory.
Just one more challenge. Keeps the competition away anyway.
