unglamorous grind of maintenance

i heard a discussion recently around fitness and strength training where one individual noted they didn’t like the term “maintenance phase” in regards to training regimens. it incidentally gave off the impression of a passive or lazier portion of time, as noted in comparison to striving for growth and progress - which is just to say they wanted a bit more credit for the time put in at the gym that was not quite portrayed with the term “maintaining fitness”.

but maintaining fitness is work! maintaining a clean house is work. maintaining relationships is work. on and on. it’s anything but passive.

and it’s typically not the glamorous stuff. it’s often the gritty, grimy, grind. there is a diligence to maintenance - it is playing the long game.
sanding, cleaning, polishing, unclogging the pipes, breaking down the gunk collected, smoothing out the snags and rough edges, patching the leaky holes.
reversing the degradation.

corrosion, degradation, wear and tear are natural - no one blames the sink for clogging or condemns the shelves for collecting dust. no one hates the car for the oil change. maintenance is performance restoration in the small unglamorous ways.

in a fascinating article titled the disappearing art of maintenance, this labor-intensive process is explored in light of our current industrial society. there is a current ease of access that creates a counterforce to the necessity of maintenance - why maintain or repair something when you can buy a new one (in a fun different color) and ship it overnight to your front door?

“The way the world is constructed today is no longer legible, politically or technically. Objects come and go under mysterious circumstances. Cars and trains either run or someone else fixes them. The objects in our lives are shipped to us from faraway lands, and they work until they don’t. Discarded, they get hauled away in the early morning by stinky trucks.”

to be fair, there are plenty of hip DIYers on the internet showing everyone via their YouTube tutorials how to repair and upcycle almost anything these days - and this article points out this movement as a step in the right direction. however, a quick repair or crafty re-haul is a lot different than the day-in-day-out reality of what many would envision a maintenance/repair vocational worker to be.

the grind of maintenance comes with the inevitable grunt work. there is unmistakably a labor component. and at the same time, i loved the article’s joint emphasis on the thought process as well.

“[Maintenance] does offer a rough methodology for thinking through these questions and priorities. As a type of work that straddles production and consumption, maintenance can help us reckon with both the limits and possibilities of industrial society...

Maintenance should be seen as a noble craft. It should be seen as something that teaches people not just how to repair, but how to think.”

maintenance can be portrayed as frugal, strapped, scrappy, and blue collar - or rogue, independent, innovative, and resourceful. maintenance doesn’t have to be drudgery, it can be empowering.

so with a posture of maintenance can we look at an item in a completely different way? how to restore vs how to replace? how to optimize vs how to overlook? how to repair vs how to dispose?

now we’re talking mindset.
a maintenance mindset.
mindset maintenance.
let’s break this down.

maintenance starts with inspection. the engineering problem becomes addressing probable points of failure - areas requiring regular monitoring and upkeep - for prevention of catastrophic failure. the more weight supported by a particular element, the more catastrophic and dangerous the potential failure, and therefore, the higher priority for maintenance.

next step, supplies. what tools do i need for this job? resource procurement. skills or knowledge acquisition. raw materials.

then of course, the labor. got to put in the work. do the thing.

and rinse, repeat. not a one-and-done scenario. there are maintenance logs, inventory schedules, etc.
to optimize performance, you are never done.

i hope you’ve thought this through in the mindset comparison by now...

my mindset requires maintenance. maintaining mental health is a challenge just as maintaining physical health is. and requires continual inputs. i have to take regular inspection; utilize proper tools, processes, and knowledge; and implement the grunt work. over and over and over again.

think again.

maintenance is playing the long game of daily performance restoration - all parts demand it. i can’t regularly rotate and change the tires on the car and expect it to run indefinitely without engine maintenance.
it’s a game of body, head, and heart.

i’ll let a nugget from AA’s blue book close out the rambling here with this one:

“We are never cured…what we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities.”

over and over and over again.

article read: https://www.noemamag.com/the-disappearing-art-of-maintenance/