What Difference Do I Want to Make? What Difference Can I Make?

What difference do I want to make in the world? What difference can I make? I'm only one person, and not a terribly social or persuasive person at that. I'm prone to wild swings of commitment to most causes and projects. What I can say is that the one thing that doesn't change is my passion for handwork; proper get-your-hands-into-it and get dirty work. The people I respect most in the world aren't actors or politicians or CEOs. They're mechanics and woodworkers and blue collars of all stripes. Why? Because they're the folks who get things done! Without people who have solid technical skills, nothing can happen. If you need a house, no amount of mortgage brokers or bankers can make that house appear without construction workers to build it. No amount of money can fix your alternator without a mechanic. An army of developers and coders can't make the internet run without technicians to lay cable, build satellites, and maintain that network.

We're about to enter a period where a serious blue collar shortage is going to interrupt a lot of industries because the last twenty years has been dedicated to undervaluing trades and directing students to choose white collar or service professions. According to Forbes magazine, 38% of skilled trades jobs are held by workers 55 or older, particularly in electrical and machine maintenance trades. Those folks are going to retire and there aren't enough young people going to trade school to replace them because our culture has been streaming people into the debt-heavy world of university education. Well, that's okay, you say. Companies will just have to pay more for workers with those skill sets. Except that's not happening either. Wages for skilled labour have not improved, in fact they've fallen. Who wants to train for years or do an apprenticeship for a minimum wage job? That's right, no one!

Until we start to respect the trades, the situation will not improve. That's the difference I try to make- I share my enthusiasm for hands-on work with everyone I meet. I do my best to improve my skills in these areas so I can teach other people how to do things for themselves.

Knowledge breeds respect. Someone who's tried to build a bookshelf and come out with a not so satisfying result has more respect for a craftsperson who can make one than someone who just went to a store and bought a shelf. Heck, someone who's opened the hood of their car and taken a look at the engine has more respect for mechanics than someone who hasn't. I'm not trying to get everyone to take up a trade, merely to make them acknowledge how necessary they are to the day to day functioning of the world.