The right tools for the job

[sonia]

I just cut a foot of length off my hair. It is now down to my waist. When braided. I watched a couple of youtube videos: Haartraum and Bebexo. I debated whether I needed to get special hair-cutting scissors, but Bebexo specified sharp scissors, and I have a pair of sewing scissors I had gotten sharpened shortly before the pandemic, so I used those.

My hair is wavy and floaty when it's dry, so I did this right after washing it. I combed through it, put in ponytail holders, and cut away. I wasn't willing to rip up my hair by moving a tight ponytail holder down it while wet, so I probably lost some accuracy by using scrunchies instead. It's certainly close enough to straight across for the braid I always wear, and see also wavy and floaty when dry. No one will ever know.

I saved $30, and also escaped a migraine from breathing the chemical soup of a hair-cutting place. It's nice to have the uneven ends cut off, and now I can bend over to pull weeds without the end of my braid dragging through the dirt.

Related to this question of hair-cutting scissors, I've been thinking about this article: The Shopping Cure by Anne Helen Petersen. "The one thing that would temporarily calm me down was buying shit. Not in massive quantities, and not clothes. Just things that seemed like they would fix small problems, fill small lacks."

When does it make sense to make do, and when is it worth getting the right tool for the job?

I recently saw that the writing app Scrivener was on sale for $30, and I went ahead and bought it. Like several of my pandemic purchases, it looked like an impulse purchase, but it was a confluence of opportunity and an ongoing problem, in this case trying to rearrange a bunch of articles into a book in InDesign. Absolutely the wrong tool for that job. Not sure if I'll even be writing another book, but I'll try Scrivener for my articles (which I've been writing in Emacs), and have a new tool available for future projects.

That buying decision also had something to do with finally identifying as a writer. Not because I published my third book after over ten years of writing monthly articles, but because I found myself writing up the minutes for festival project planning meetings. Somehow that flipped the switch in my head from "someone who writes things sometimes" to "writer." And Scrivener is for writers.

I don't know if I've been over-buying because of the pandemic, or if I've been pushed more toward a reasonable amount of buying tools after growing up with the idea that buying nothing was the ideal. It is appealing to be able to solve some small problems (and support some tool-makers) with the application of money, since the big problems are so intractable.

Comments

[jenett]

I adore Scrivener. (It is a complicated tool, glad to help if you have questions, but a lot of it is "figure out how to do the thing you care about at the moment.")

I had a lot of benefit from working through the tutorial enough o figure out what it could do, and knowing I can go back and figure that out if I ever need it down the road.

[sonia]

Thanks! Yes, I'm working through the tutorial and finding it helpful. There was a lot of searching online for how to do things with InDesign, so I imagine Scrivener will be similar. It would have to work pretty hard to be *less* intuitive.

[asakiyume]

I definitely agree with your last statement. And solving small problems is a good thing.

[sonia]

Yes, maybe I'm overthinking it!

[asakiyume]

Not at all! Or I mean, nothing you said sounded like overthinking--just reflecting. Buying good scissors and a writing tool like Scrivener doesn't seem like overbuying to me--not in the least--but I understand how one can feel wary. When companies cynically try to make us believe consumption is the cure-all to everything, it can make us lean to an extreme of thinking that *any* purchases are suspect, but that's not true, and it's good to remember that it's not. I feel like your reflections are you doing that (and reflecting on other things as well).

[sonia]

Thanks for the perspective. I'm struggling with finding balance and a middle way these days. (And your first comment was fine on its own too, of course.)

The right tool for the job!

[jesse_the_k]

Huzzah for Scrivener!

(I've recently splurged on a new pair of cutting pliers. I figured I'd made 150 pieces since I'd put it in my online shopping cart. Buying shit is hard, yo.)

I admire your bravery re: hair.

Re: The right tool for the job!

[sonia]

Yay, cutting pliers!

Thanks, re: hair. It's nice to have the option to cut it myself when it gets obnoxiously long.