why diy?

Thanks for your post - about heirarchial platforms and mentioning DIY.

I never planned to be a DIY'er, but at some point in the early '90s my wife and I decided we'd like to try going sailboat cruising. We did not have enough money to "do it right", so we knew we'd have to learn a lot of handy skills or we'd surely be shipwrecked. We took diesel class, we bought a sail-sewing machine, we assembled our own systems (once we bought the decrepit old boat), and we learned from lots of mistakes. So when you said "learn to do it right instead of paying someone else to do it wrong", I had to laugh - we did the opposite! I am sure most of what we did was wrong by most standards, but we stayed afloat and got in a decade of bouncing around the Caribbean. By the end, we knew a few things!

Later, I also designed and built a house in the jungle in the Dominican Republic. I did all kinds of things wrong! But the house did not collapse. It was 100% off-grid and that was pretty gratifying.

I am downsizing presently - moving from a big house to a small apartment in the next few months. It is gonna feel really weird to take only a few hand-tools but there will not be room for all the accumulated gear, alas. I plan to join a repair-cafe group so I can get my fix of tinkering and have a place to take stuff if it breaks down and I need more tools than I keep in stock. I wonder how that will work out?

Anyway, I will ride along with the /DIY - not as an expert, just as a cheerleader!