Hard Days, Good Days

Something different for Volumes.

Almost a decade ago, when I first created Volumes, I worked a day job for one winter to summer as a handyman for a care home. The work was hard, both in the sense of being physically demanding and that it was often difficult for me to wrap my head around. I might be able to distill ideas to first principles, but seeing the world in terms of mechanisms and measurements is like being one of Edwin Abbot’s two-dimensional creatures attempting to see the world in three dimensions.

I had, however, a guide to this unfamiliar terrain: a man in his seventies named Mike, who could navigate the world of physical breakages and tangible solutions — he could look at wall or listen to a pipe and know exactly what was wrong and about twelve ways he might fix it — and who obviously saw me as no less alien. Somehow, he and I found ways to communicate, to work together, and to become friends.

I wrote many notes while I worked that job, and over the years they’ve been rewritten and collated into various ve…