Fine! I’ll fix the TV Myself.

I want to share a story with you about the first time I realised I would be ok on my own.

About three weeks after Terry died I was going through our stuff, getting ready to move and put our house on the market. In the garage, covered in dust was an old LCD TV that Terry had promised to fix, but that had instead sat in the garage because Terry had bought a new TV instead. At the time, he insisted he would still fix the old TV and mount it in his shed.

So anyway, I come across this TV and I just lost it… I was so angry! I mean, he’d promised to fix this TV, and he hadn’t done it. It had been sitting there for months! He even had all the parts he needed, he just hadn’t gotten around to doing it.

“Fine!” I yelled angrily to no one in particular (the garage was empty), “I’ll fix it myself!”

Now, I should probably point out here that I have never, ever, in my entire life, fixed a TV or anything even remotely electronic. I did, however, know how to use YouTube. I already knew what the problem was, the same TV had broken down about three years earlier and we knew from that experience that if you knew what you were doing, it would cost $10 to fix which was way better than the $150 it would have cost just to have someone look at it. So anyway, I had my parts and I knew the problem. YouTube to the rescue!

And YouTube delivered! Not only did I find a video that showed me step by step exactly what I had to do, but it also explained how to operate a soldering iron, which I’d also never done before. In less than half an hour I had the TV fixed and working in perfect order.

Then I paused. What the hell did I want a third TV for? We were already moving to a house much smaller than the one we were living in. After all that effort and all that angst and anger, I eventually gave the TV away for nothing.

But really, it wasn’t nothing. Instead, I proved I could do it. It was only a TV, but because I’d fixed it, because I’d found a solution to a problem I’d never had to face before, I felt like it was a major accomplishment. And three weeks after Terry died, that was exactly the confirmation I needed that I could make it through this.

Since then I’ve tackled a lot of other tasks by myself. I have a friend who used to say “call me and I’ll give you a hand” but I rarely do. Not because I don’t want his help, but because doing these tasks on my own just reaffirms that I can do this.

When the job gets too big though, I will ask for his help, and that’s ok too. It’s good to know your limits.

What about you? Are there any projects you’ve been able to tackle on your own that you never dreamed of doing before? Let me know in the comments.

Till next time xx