If I Were a Carpenter

April, you’ve done it again.

The pale pink plum trees blossoming extravagantly outside my window make me swoon, I’m intoxicated by the postcard-perfect sky and the light breezes teasing through the pine boughs above the squirrel feeder. A crow wings his way from one telephone pole to another, cawing a welcome to the morning, while wrens and robins perched high in eucalyptus branches trill and warble in pleasant greeting. At least, I assume that’s what they’re doing—I can’t quite make it out over the din of the power tools and hammering and banging in all of the other yards.

Spring calls up the very best in my neighbors, who suddenly rise from the couches where they lingered cozily all winter eating doughnuts and watching “This Old House” reruns. Now they stretch and fl ex and fasten tool belts over their full bellies, ready to test their mettle on courageous home improvement projects. Let the Games begin! What a glorious sight: four contestants vying valiantly against one another in the Roof Patching ring, another group outdoing one another in the Large Branch Pruning arena, two going at it neck and neck in the Power-Washing contest. A cheer for Mr. Forbish, Mr. Snelling and the Brady kid, duking it out fiercely with drills and saws in separate open-doored garages —by Jove, it’s the do-it-yourself Amateur Contractor competition, which does not require making anything other than an extraordinary amount of noise. The ancient Rites of Home Repair dictate that contestants may only be graded on sound and duration of effort, making end results absolutely irrelevant.

I, too, could have been a contender. At least, I believe I might have entered the fray, if I’d grown up with better role models. What a marvelous notion to get out there in the backyard and saw those dead branches, or drag the ladder over to the gutters and have at them with a hose; I, too, could plant something, paint something, hammer something. Imagine the satisfaction of actually going to Home Depot to buy some grape stakes and a box of nails, and finally fixing that blasted hole in the fence along the side yard. But quite confidentially, I suffered as a child. I hail from the other side of the tracks, a weedy, seedy place in which home restoration efforts took a frayed back seat next to Self- Improvement.

Working on yourself is no picnic. One must engage in a dedicated fashion, and when dinnertime rolls around, there’s not a scrap of energy left over for fixing the loose board on the front porch or sanding the deck. Introspection is a job as strenuous and complicated as remodeling a run-down house, with little of the concrete gratification gleaned from, say, eyeing the new brass faucet installation.

Despite my parents’ coaching, for a long time I naively believed you were allowed to get up and just sort of enjoy your day. This theory turns out to be balderdash. As recently as this weekend, when I was avidly researching the Sunday papers, I was reminded that there are a great many other tasks at hand. A remarkably sound article in one of the colorful pull-out sections admonished me to “make firm plans for every vacation day you will earn this year,” “buy a harmonica,” “reel in a new hobby,” and “look every service person you deal with directly in the eye.” When I have completed these arduous activities, I will be required, it is clear, to drink a glass of red wine, eat more broccoli, sign up for karate lessons, test my brain power, ratchet up my water consumption, and make a difference. Absolute musts: turn off my cell phone, take the stairs instead of the elevator, buy a heart-pounding adventure book, perform ab crunches, help a child and learn how to play a new card game, not to mention signing up for a hot air balloon ride and sky-diving lessons. If there’s a single second left over, the article commands me to “hire a yoga instructor” to come show me a few simple relaxation moves, which I’ll surely need after all that efforting.

Self-improvement requires a copious amount of thinking and reading. You can’t just plunge into it enthusiastically, any more than you can hang a picture without first testing for studs behind the drywall. Now I wish I’d paid more attention in high school math class; my latest research trip to the bookstore indicates there are rules, ways, and secrets of successful living, and for the life of me I can’t figure out how many. At fi rst glance there were only The Four Agreements, The Four Things Which Matter Most, The Four Pillars of Industry. But wait, there are Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Nine Ways to Be Happy and Make Something of Your Life, not to mention Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues.

By my reckoning, that’s a total of 38, but one can’t leave out Twelve Simple Rules for Success in Love, Life, and Online Dating, or Twenty-one Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating. Okay, the tally stands at 71. That is, before you add in The Forty-Eight Laws of Power, and of course, 101 Ways to Transform Your Life. And darn it all, one has to account for The Tao of Poker: 285 Rules to Transform Your Game and Life. So that’s 505 and counting. I sure wish I’d had the Brady kid fix my electric calculator when he came over to re-wire the porch light.

Working on one’s development introduces complex questions, like Zen koans, which might take a lifetime to answer, leaving precious few moments in a jam-packed day for patching holes in window screens or fixing the sprinkler controls. My mind swirls with profound concerns: caffeine—good or bad? Carbs—bad or extremely bad? Am I getting enough sex, enough sleep, enough time off? I’ll schedule some time to worry right after I finish meditating. Perhaps it’s just me, but I fi nd, as I tread determinedly along the path of self-improvement, that I’m frequently stumped by ethical dilemmas. Tip No. 27 in a magazine article on “Reenergizing Your Life” reads: try a food you’ve never eaten, like rabbit, immediately followed by Tip No. 28: volunteer at your local animal shelter. But maybe the conflict is all in my head; the two suggestions could probably just be combined, for easier scheduling. An enlightening article in Time magazine last year described an experiment proving that professional musicians, who were wired to electrodes measuring their neural activity, cause the same number of neurons to fi re whether they are playing their instruments, or just thinking about playing them! Which coincidentally supports the epiphany I had after yesterday’s nap, that, strenuous as it may be, imagining, reading, and dreaming about activities are a much sounder idea than actually getting involved in them.

So hammer away, Mr. Forbish, Mr. Snelling, and may peace be with you. Fritter away your precious weekends with that sander and electric drill, if you must. You’ll find me slaving away over here propping up my self-worth and constructing premises, beliefs, rationalizations, excuses and theories, while you simply install a skylight or remodel the bath before heading out for a beer. I’m a work-in-progress. I’d better keep at it, at least until teatime. Let me know if you need to borrow a book.

Stacy Appel is a writer in California whose work has been featured in The Chicago Tribune and other publications. She has also written for National Public Radio. You can email Stacy at ­WordWork101@aol.com.

~Stacy Appel