I was raised in a very DIY (Do It Yourself) household. We had lots of DIY books and my parents were always making DIY repairs, remodels and upgrades to our home
My friends called it "the house of perpetual remodeling".
I eagerly adopted this attitude and doubled-down on it when I was introduced to the DIY ethos of punk rock. It is a skill and an attitude that has served me and many of those around me well.
A few years back I brought-up DIY in a conversation with someone I didn't know and they pointed out "yes but what if you can't do it yourself?". This never occurred to me because my experience with DIY was always communal, and when I used the term DIY I was almost always working with others, supplementing eachothers abilities to get it done together.
But I guess there's a faction of DIY people who don't do it that way. To them, DIY is just another part of the "up-by-your-own-bootstraps" mythos. It's about "rugged individualism" and other such nonsense.
For me that's never been what DIY was about, but now I can see how that's literally what it spells-out, and I don't want anything to do with that.
So I'm making an effort to be explicit about this and use DIO (Do It Ourselves) in place of DIY.
Who is "ourselves"? Well, that would be you and me friend.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026