Hello! I am Tjard and I have lived on the island of Sylt in Germany all 20 years of my life. If I would not live here I would probably be way happier. I am fine with any pronouns used on me but feel uncomfortable at the idea of expressing myself about it here. I have some reasons for this like my uncle(that lives on the “property”) who just before my apprenticeship started, “warned” me about a “man” who outside of work hours wears dresses. Also, the co-worker I am on tour with most of the time, once told me he would be very disappointed in seeing me date a man. He is my direct neighbour. He is hard to deal with most days and drains me. I theoretically like what I work as and it can be really rewarding and get me really really happy. I am an electrician’s apprentice. I like the diagnosis and repair of home appliances and love to see “historic” home appliances on which this is the easiest.
I understand the need for more efficient appliances, maybe just more sustainable but what I see in modern devices does not seem in any way more sustainable to me. They use more electronic components which are prone to failure and are “repaired” by replacement. This is expensive and resource intensive. Our global recycling does not recover all resources and is energy intensive. I am pretty certain that the longevity of the historic devices outweigh the environmental harm done by their “excessive” use of water and electricity. The need of our capitalist system to grow has incentivised companies to lower the lifetime of devices and make it harder to repair them. It is really depressing to see/hear how people’s right to repair their own property has limited everyone. They should have easy access to repair tutorials and resources to do so.
I decided to learn about electronics around the age of 13 and started working at the age of 19. There are a couple of reasons for this. My family had financial hardships in the past and this job pays decently and feels really secure to me understandably. The interest in physical labour here has dropped so far that there is serious lack of personnel everywhere so it will be easy to find employment anywhere and will get me to a point where I can go to uni without needing to go into debt. I always had some interest in this and it just gives me even further independence by being able to fix any electrical problems I personally encounter with ease.
One recommendation I have for anyone that has come this far is to go to their distribution box and look if there is any device that says “test it regularly”, and well, just test it. They might also be built into sockets primarily in bathrooms. This would probably be a residual circuit breaker (RCD) and it is one of the few ways to protect people from death by electrocution and I find them really important.
This post has been written over around 2 hours. I like writing about myself and will continue with introducing myself further and going over to the previous chapters of my life at high school, which I could probably write many thousands of words over and still continue with this topic but I think 500 words of my incoherent rambling is more than enough.
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