grundomatic's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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Frita
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Post by Frita »

Interesting, I like to use Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning to conceptualize SD. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-p ... -taxonomy/ All are necessary to truly function at any level. And the levels build upon each other without being able to skip, much like SD. At yellow, the 2-dimensional tier one models become multi-dimensional.

Former ENTP, shifted to eNTP, and more in the XNT/fP space these days…I can totally geek out thinking about feelings.

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grundomatic
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Re: grundomatic's journal

Post by grundomatic »

Sorry about the confusion. I’m obviously not being clear, plus I think I’ve mixed up everything in my mind–SD, ERE2, and ERE1. Let me see if I can sort all of this out. Those not interested in colors or personal narratives should just stop right here.

The first thing I was trying to do was use SD as a set of directions. Not the purpose, I know, but for someone feeling a little lost, it’s tempting to do. If I’m here, where do I go next?

I will say that in general, I tend to straddle the line between social and individual. I cringed a little when I wrote “social and emotional skills”, but I went ahead and did it anyway to try and use the language of the ERE book (looking again I should have said goals). I 100% think people should be treated as ends unto themselves and not as means, but I can also appreciate that FFS sometimes you just gotta GTD.

After reading what was written here, rereading sections of Spiral Dynamics, and some introspection, it seems like I’ve been centered in green for a while without fully realizing it. There’s a good chance a lot of the anguish I have felt about leaving my job at the school is because I’m voluntarily leaving my group. Even if the organization isn’t truly green, in my mind my coworkers are a team and the students are my people. I’ve stuck around for these people for much longer than the job has interested me. It feels nothing at all like switching to a better employer in the mercenary world of orange business, or when I just walked away from that world completely. Easy to move on from that. This is much harder. You know, feelings are involved.

However, it’s obvious that I need something else, because the cute drawings, adorations, and tiny hugs can no longer cover for the misery that comes from feeling trapped doing the same thing day after day. It also doesn’t help that the thing I’m doing is training the youngsters to operate in the very matrix I’m trying to escape. So before I thought I should lean into green, but maybe it’s more like “been there, done that”.

The second thing I was trying to express was that I’d much rather work with others while building my “renaissance man” skillset. Call it being an extravert or call it not ready to leave green completely behind me, but I can’t see myself happy sitting alone at home, learning how to fix things. I don’t know why that’s the image I had of ERE for a while, but rereading the book, that’s clearly not all it is. That’s me fixating on the least attractive (to me) part of it. I could join a sport’s team for physiological goals. I could work for my accountant friend to further my financial education, or teach the (basic) business skills I have. Look, there’s a whole category for social skills! Ecological goals can be furthered working with environmental groups, I’m sure.

The last thing I was trying to say (speaking of catnip) was that the whole idea of spiral wizardry, win:win:win, and helping people right where they are seems amazing. Something worthwhile to work towards, that will indeed take work, given that as of even a few days ago I was unable to recognize the vmeme I was operating from. There’s probably something to be said here about green origins of ERE, but I’m not sure I’ll do it justice. I will say that to this [currently] green-centered individual, “getting my shit together and learning stuff so that I can REALLY help others, the world, (and myself!?!)” is a lot more appealing than “learning a bunch of skills in order to tell myself that I am master of my world and a total badass”.

I don’t know if that clarified anything, but I tried. (Ugh, now that I’m looking, I can see that’s a very green thing to say.)

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Re: grundomatic's journal

Post by jacob »

grundomatic wrote:
Thu Apr 20, 2023 10:34 pm
After reading what was written here, rereading sections of Spiral Dynamics, and some introspection, it seems like I’ve been centered in green for a while without fully realizing it. There’s a good chance a lot of the anguish I have felt about leaving my job at the school is because I’m voluntarily leaving my group. Even if the organization isn’t truly green, in my mind my coworkers are a team and the students are my people. I’ve stuck around for these people for much longer than the job has interested me. It feels nothing at all like switching to a better employer in the mercenary world of orange business, or when I just walked away from that world completely. Easy to move on from that. This is much harder. You know, feelings are involved.
There's a cheat sheet (although it's probably not a good idea to use a cheat sheet) here: (warm refers to individualistic orientations, cold refers to collective orientations)
jacob wrote:
Mon Aug 22, 2022 5:06 pm
The "highest value" goes roughly like this:
Beige: Survival (warm)
Purple: Family/Tradition (cold)
Red: Winning/Losing (warm)
Blue: Duty/Faith (cold) <-- not the original quote, I think this is closer
Orange: Expertise/Achievement (warm)
Green: People/Service (cold)
Yellow: Ideas/Systems (warm)
Turquoise: Being/Patterns (cold)
It's better to ask: "What really motivates you?" "What are you naturally attracted to?" For example, if you watch some of those survival shows where they put a bunch people of somewhere in Canada or Alaska for 0-90+ days until they cry uncle, interviews with the contestants almost solely revolve around "taking care of their family", "only feeling like themselves when they are out in the woods", and occasionally "wanting to prove themselves"---a clear example of living the beige/purple vMemes with a splash of red.

The interview equivalent would be "why do you want/like to work here?" I can assure you than my answer has never been "because I like the people" or "it's a way to advance my career". I think value-compatibility this is also a good indicator of how likely one is to stick with a job or field of work. If [the job] is not feeding into one's preferred values, it's going to be miserable.

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grundomatic
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Post by grundomatic »

What I got from that was that I probably shouldn’t pick my values from a menu, and that I need to figure it out for myself what my motivation is, but if I insist, “here is the menu”. I think the real struggle here is that I’m trying to sort this out in the midst of serious (continuing) burnout–hard to know what really motivates me because I’ve given up myself for so long.

Can anyone tell me what they did to accurately and precisely determine their values? Does everyone else just “know”? How do I simultaneously question and reflect on my values and where they came from, while still using them to make decisions?

I did the same value ranking exercise I did 50 weeks ago (hmm…pattern?), and while most of the things came out the same, I did see things like popularity and recognition slide down on the rankings, while inner harmony moved way up. I guess I can just keep using that tool, maybe trying it also at times when I’m not in the midst of inner and outer turmoil, and adjust my activities according to my “alleged” values, see if it “feels right”, and adjust from there.

I also see that MBTI has popped up on the forum while I was thinking about SD! I’ll spout off some more stuff about me. It is my journal, after all. I’m an ENFP, making my stack:

NeFiTeSi

As far as work goes, pretty easy for me to relate it to my stack. I can be the boss and enforce rules if I have to (TeSi), but it starts to be draining if I’m not learning something new (Ne) or at the very least serving the mission (Fi).

Ne pretty much explains my attraction to ERE–do a bunch of different stuff and not have to do the same thing all day everyday? Woohoo! (Of course forgetting it has to be reasonably tied together, and also “forgetting” the negative goals of overeating peanut M&M’s) Hey, where is “novelty” on the SD values menu?

Fi is of course enamored with FI–because, hey, now I can do what I want without having to take into consideration what the market values. If the job of the auxiliary function is to support the dominant function, it makes it extra important for me to figure out my values in order to not spin out of control (see above) doing things I don’t actually value or that have negative goals.

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Re: grundomatic's journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Can anyone tell me what they did to accurately and precisely determine their values? Does everyone else just “know”? How do I simultaneously question and reflect on my values and where they came from, while still using them to make decisions?
I have done the exercise of simply ranking all the values on a list of many different values in attempt to determine my top 3 to 7. I also did a pretty weak spreadsheet analysis exercise where I kept track of how much time I was spending on various activities and how my daily happiness was influenced. Since I am also primary Ne, I made Novel Experiences one of my main Renaissance Lifestyle categories, but some of the specific activities I assigned to this category didn't work out that well. For instance, walking a new/different hiking trail once per week by myself wasn't all that thrilling or enjoyable. It might be the case that striving towards incorporating more novelty in your life is kind of like trying to tickle yourself.

Another way to determine what you value (or deserve-lol) would be to do as suggested in "ERE" the book, and simply assume that what you choose to do does accurately line up with that which you value. For instance, if I am eating big bowl of ice cream every night, then from the perspective of rational objective alien intelligence looking down on my behavior from above, it must be the case that I value Pleasure over Health. Something I recently read on cognitive dissonance implied that there are really just two core values which are Integrity vs. Adaptability. If you value Integrity over Adaptability then you will change your behavior to match your prior stated as held value(s.) If you value Adaptability then you will change your stated as held values to conform to your observed behavior.

Because I sometimes like to amuse myself with Journal of Irreproducible Results type activities (like our fellow Ne dominant Ben Franklin flying a kite during electrical storm), I have recently been playing around with using operations research software tools to optimize my lifestyle. I will let you know if I can get this to work. If I am highly successful, I may market it as Agency-the App. :lol:

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grundomatic
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Post by grundomatic »

@7w5 Seems like the relationship between those two ultimate values would have to be a dialectic (am I using that word right?), as 100% Integrity is just being super-rigid (and where’s the growth potential in that?), and 100% Adaptability is just floating around with no values at all. Also, what is it about us primary Ne users and ice cream? Is it that shadow Se leading us astray?

Moving on from ice cream, @AnalyticalEngine keeps telling me there is no “you”, just “you in different contexts”. I resisted this notion for some months. Then I’m having trouble figuring out my values. Finally I’m reading The Social Animal, and something I read clicked it all into place. It’s no wonder I’m having trouble figuring out what “I” value, since I can’t separate “me” from the rest of the world. I was looking at all the things I have ever valued, and discarding all them with thoughts like “I know where I got that”, “That’s probably my mother speaking”, and “Who did it benefit that I was holding that sacred?”, like by doing that I was eventually going to unearth my own original, genuine values. Not sure I’ve ever had an original thought in my life, so all my values are naturally second-hand.

I’m not sure that helps me figure out what to do with myself. Speaking to @Jacob’s prompts, I can’t say what motivates me right now, but I can probably pay attention to what naturally attracts me. Again, it’ll probably be easier when I’m not in the thick of end-of-school-year insanity and can take some time to reset/repair my internal compass. So there’s a good analogy. While I can’t reach within myself to pull out a tablet with my values spelled out in stone, I am confident that I have a “value compass” that will point me in the right direction once reset/repaired. At the very least I need to start listening to the “mismatch misery alarm” when it starts going off, rather than powering through for years at a time.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: grundomatic's journal

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

grundomatic wrote:
Mon May 08, 2023 12:25 pm
At the very least I need to start listening to the “mismatch misery alarm” when it starts going off, rather than powering through for years at a time.
The "misery alarm" concept is genius. Its a very familiar problem for me that I continue to fail to solve. It reminds me a bit of the pothole metaphor: https://parenthoodunderstood.com/the-po ... or-change/

As far as identifying values a podcast I used to listen to sold these values cards : https://www.amazon.com/The-ONE-Thing-Co ... B08WJM34MT. Good luck on your journey.

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Post by grundomatic »

Apr SR 26%, IR2 1.52

With all the values talk I forgot to post the monthly numbers. This month was rough because repairs had to be done at the rental house and there was still no income from it. However, the management company let us know this past week that the state approved the housing aid. We are holding off any celebrations until that money hits the bank account, but it is a relief knowing it should be coming.

DW wants to straight up sell the rental, as the months and months of income are easily forgotten when large stressful things like this happen in regard to the house. After the school year concludes and we are on summer break, we’ll discuss our options. I need to do a detailed calculation, but my quick figures show the return is just not what it was a few years ago. Also, we have felt the effects of concentration of our assets in one house. The managers have offered to buy it if we will do an owner finance, which means we go from playing landlord to playing bank. DW wasn’t opposed to this, having worked in foreclosures she seems more confident in our ability to take action if the borrower doesn’t pay up than when tenants don’t pay up. It would save commissions compared to selling it the traditional way, and if structured right it would spread out the capital gains such that we’d be in the 0% tax bracket for them. This makes me happy. The other option which I already implied is to sell it normally, and take a large commission and tax hit on it. Yuck.

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grundomatic
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Post by grundomatic »

Schooool’s out for summer!
Schooool’s out for ever!

Or maybe it’s just a year sabbatical, we’ll see what happens.

Left for a week’s vacation almost immediately after finishing the school year, and I feel like a different person now. I’m hoping that I will continue to feel better as I continue to not work. I have a pile of books I’m looking forward to reading, as well as trying to better execute on ERE things. All of it in service of making my outside better match the inside, and growing both.

May SR 49% IR 2.08
Spending trending up because going out to do things is on the rise in my household, and that stuff costs money. The money didn’t hit the bank account this month, but we got ALL of the back rent owed us. It’s going to make for a good June $-wise. Discussed what to do with the house, and now we are both leaning towards keeping it, mostly to avoid transaction costs, taxes, and hassle. That or we are both still too drained to think about changing the status quo with the thing.

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Re: grundomatic's journal

Post by theanimal »

Great news about the back rent! I can imagine that's a huge relief. Will you change anything going forward with regards to finding and selecting tenants to minimize something like this happening again?

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Ego
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Post by Ego »

Whoa! That is great news. Over the years we've had several evictions and have never been successful in collecting back rent so kudos to your management company for pulling local strings to make that happen.

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grundomatic
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Post by grundomatic »

@theanimal
There's nothing I can do about a pandemic changing laws and people's minds about paying their rent, but what can I change?

We could switch management companies, but DW said this company was one of the best in town. From what I've seen of management companies where we live now, it's not hard to believe. So that might be just be going from "not great" to "worse".

We could ask the management company to increase the income requirements or require a larger deposit. Beyond that, I have no ideas.

@ego
It was COVID relief money from the state of Tennessee, not from the tenant directly, so the management company didn't really work any miracles or anything. Do you have any suggestions on decreasing the chances of this happening again?

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Post by Ego »

Interesting. Either you, the management company or your lawyer had to file the documents to get the covid relief, so that's good.

Yes, we began using Realpage's AI screening for background checks on prospective tenants a few years ago. It is controversial to say the least, but it works. Those who have been AI screened have been trouble-free tenants. That said, I am not sure I would change management companies for the screening software alone.

Doing the showings can be a pain in the ass if the manager has to travel to the property for each showing. During Covid we began creating virtual video tours for each apartment. It worked so well that we now show a place in person only after the prospective tenant has applied and is approved. I would guess that your managers are very motivated to quickly find someone who qualifies. They may overlook imperfections in the application just to get someone into the home and end the showing process.

You may be able to double check that they are sticking with your criteria by looking at the info provided by the evicted tenant. Look at the eviction paperwork. Their application should be include in the legal filing. That may tell you if you current manager is doing their job.

You should be weeding out anyone with a previous eviction, assuming that is permitted in TN. There is a database similar to credit bureaus for evictions and background checks. Make sure the screening includes an eviction search and your manager knows that renting to someone with a previous eviction is not allowed. I assume that in TN your manager can also contact previous and current landlords to make sure the tenant paid rent on time and have not been problems. If so, then you will want to have them show you that they have done so with the next tenant. You may have access to this data if the management company has an owner's portal.

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grundomatic
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Post by grundomatic »

The management company told us the tenants applied for the relief money, so that was my understanding of it.

They do filter for evictions within the past 10 years, having any unpaid landlord debt is an auto-decline, as is more than 4 late payments in the last 12 months. There is also a credit score minimum and a criminal background check. We don't see the applications, just signed leases. I don't see the eviction paperwork in the owner portal, so I'll ask for it. Thanks for your help.

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grundomatic
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Post by grundomatic »

Vacation

A large fraction of June was spent on vacation, first a small getaway right after the school year, followed by going to see both our families. Pet sitting has separated vacations from paying for a second house wherever we go. What I’d like to do now is separate traveling somewhere else from relaxing. We are fairly well removed from busy tourist style trips, which I’m happy about, but it leaves me wondering why we need to go to someone else’s house to read books, watch movies, pet animals, and occasionally go out to eat or for coffee. Exploration of the topic was not well received. Best as I can tell for myself, it removes external and internal obligations. We have more time together because neither of us have friends asking us to go out, and my state of mind improves because I don’t have anything else I think I should be doing. The former seems solvable with more planned time together, and the latter could be accomplished at home with further emotional work and better prioritization. Accept what I must do and do it with a better mindset, and beyond that be doing what I want (ideally things with mostly positive goals).

Not stressing about $ experiment

For a couple months now, I’ve given up mental resistance to spending $ whenever other people are involved. It relieves a lot of anguish in the moment, for sure. Friends want to order food? Fine. DW asks if some purchase sounds reasonable? Buy whatever you want. We are meeting for drinks? Ok. As of May, it hadn’t impacted our average spending much. What remains to be seen is how relief in the moment balances anguish at accounting time. I’m going to do June totals right now…well, high compared to non-vacation months, but less than last June, so our TTM spending actually went down. Looks like I will continue with this operating procedure for now.

Not Working

Not long ago I had a dreadful feeling in my gut upon realizing that summer break is over halfway over and it’s rapidly approaching time to go back to school. Then I remembered I’m not going back, and that made me feel better. When people find out I’m not working, some offer up positions at their employer, which I try to remember is their way of showing they care about me. The problem is I’m susceptible to suggestion and start thinking about jobs. I suppose it’s not bad to entertain opportunities, but I’m a little disappointed in myself that I can’t exit the “must have job” mindset.

Numbers

I’m going to stop reporting the monthly numbers here. IR2 and SR are obviously going to go down with me not working. The things I want to focus on aren’t captured by those numbers–physical and mental health, emotional awareness and resilience, improved relationships, learning new things, etc. I suppose I could try to quantify those things and track and report them as well, but that sounds terrible. Tracking every variable of my life sounds exhausting. I suppose this is where contingency goal-setting comes in.

Emotional State

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to hear that I’m feeling better after a month off and knowing I don’t have to go back to work for now. I am more content in daily life, and find myself laughing more than I have in years. Yesterday I felt strong emotions of joy and excitement upon completing a miniature that I was painting. It’s like I’d forgotten how to enjoy myself, and rediscovering it sure is fun!

ertyu
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Post by ertyu »

"not have anything else i should be doing" makes me think you'll be a perfect candidate for the gtd system (there's a thread on it iirc). the main purpose of the system is to reduce/eliminate mental load.

as for the must have job mindset, i had the same going on. for me, it seems to be a leg in the "security stool" i can't seem to let go of. trying coasting now for this reason.

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grundomatic
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Post by grundomatic »

@ertyu

I started a rudimentary GTD system late last year sometime and I did find it useful. The feature I like the best is the someday/maybe list. It keeps wild pipe dreams from clogging up the list of things that actually need to happen, but gives them proper respect by actually writing them down. Reminds me of Barbara Sher's "Scanners Journal". Anyhow, as the school year came to a close, I stopped doing anything on the list and tried to just hang on. Now I've not done anything on the list in the name of using summer vacation to totally relax and recover. I plan on Getting Back To It when DW heads back to work at the end of the month.

The funny thing is that I now find myself doing "productive" things anyhow. Like after hours of video gaming, I find myself actually wanting to work out, which I hadn't done in months and months. Today I did some account opening/transfer stuff. Like I'm beginning to reach the point of diminishing returns on being a lazy bum.

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Work

I got my last regular paycheck yesterday. DW starts back in a week. To say I am still having mixed feelings about not returning is a major understatement. Looking back, I remember the long list of good things I liked about teaching, and not the daily misery. Maybe this is a good thing. I get to keep pleasant memories and have a peaceful present–as long as DW and/or my old boss keeps me from returning to the fold. As seen in last year’s mistake, my judgment in this realm is not to be trusted.

Rental House

We decided to keep it rather than sell it. The top two reasons are probably the ease of not changing anything and wanting to avoid capital gains and depreciation recapture taxes. We’ve even discussed moving back there for both the change and to not have to pay some of those taxes, though I’ll have to dig deeper to see if that’s really the case.

Year Off

When people ask what I’ll be doing with my year off, I tell them I plan to relax and recover. They can then either relate to wanting to relax or worry about why I need to recover, and it mostly relieves any discussion of future employment. What is much harder is deciding what it is I will actually do, or with what mindset I should approach it.

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Still Not Working

The kids arrive at school on Wednesday, and I’m still not employed at the school. I’ve managed to hold the line on this one. I am going in tomorrow to help a former colleague paint their cart, which acts as the traveling teacher’s mobile classroom. It’ll be interesting to see what emotions surface, being there and seeing my friends.

Chores

DW was back at work doing the mandatory training last week, so I tried to leave “vacation mode” as well. I intentionally wasn’t too ambitious because there is no need to “waste” my time off with overdoing housework instead of overdoing paid work, but I found peace in doing things around the house that I hadn’t felt in some time. Turns out some light chores aren’t so bad when I’m not spending all day every day doing something that was making me miserable.

Improv

I signed up for a class at a different improv comedy theater than before. My “walk and talk” friend is on the company there, and I want to give it a shot when I’m not using it as an escape, with my life’s problems seeping into my performances. Plus I think it will be good to have something structured and scheduled to go to. If I like it, the group moves together through the curriculum as a cohort, and it’ll be nice to maybe make some new friends. I’m also hoping to satisfy the attention-grubbing performer part of me that I could see pestering me to do something crazy like go back to work for the external validation. I’ve considered volunteering to give tours at the local rainwater harvesting demonstration lab for the same reason.

Neighborhood Association

I’ve agreed to be the VP of our newly revived neighborhood association. After watching one city council/mayor meeting and getting one email from a neighbor that I don’t know how to reply to, I’m not sure this is for me. I mean, in the name of not being a flake and not running away at the first hint of a challenge, I’ll do it, but…

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grundomatic doesn’t fix it log

Months ago the valve under the bathroom sink started leaking, and in the midst of the end of the school year and burnout, the last thing I wanted to do was monkey with it. So the fix was to stop using hot water at that sink, and it seemed to quit leaking.

Now I have a chance to practice things like this. After getting some easy things done yesterday morning, I thought I’d keep my momentum going and fix this. I seriously thought I’d take the valve off, clean the threads, apply new plumbers tape, and be done. HA! When I started cleaning the old tape/goo off the threads, the pipe started coming off, too. That's right, plumbers tape and thread goo was keeping my inlet pipe together.

I texted a handy friend, who knew just what to do. He let me borrow his oscillating multitool, so I cut the back of the cabinet and the wall to give myself some space. The plan was to cut off the pipe and use a sharkbite valve. He sent a picture of a copper pipe cutter, and said I’d need one of those, and that they were probably right next to the sharkbite valves. “Will it work on iron?” I asked. He didn’t know houses newer than 100 years old were built with that stuff. He got busy at work, so I turned to my neighbor, as I knew he had done some plumbing work for another neighbor and so knew what was in our houses.

He happened to have a galvanized steel nipple to show me what the part looks like. He told me to use a pipe wrench to just twist it off. My stepdad had bought some plumbing supplies/tools when he was here, so I was in luck. I went home and started trying to twist that dumb thing off. Trying and trying and trying. Finally my friend sent a picture and asked if my pipe wrenched looked like that? No, I was using channel locks, like an idiot. I cleaned up and went to bed.

This morning my neighbor left his pipe wrenches on my porch before he went to work. I tried and tried to turn that thing, to no avail. I went to the store and got WD-40 Penetrating Special, sprayed it at the connection, and waited. Still couldn’t get it off. Sprayed, waited, and tried again. Nope. So I cut a giant hole in my wall to really get in there, get the wrench on that pipe and twist. Nothing. At some point I took a hammer to the wrench. I’m going to spray it again this evening, then again right before bed, and try again in the morning. Beyond that I don’t know what else to do.

My friend said heat might do it, but he was a little nervous about me using his blowtorch. Me too. I had to youtube how to operate the oscillating tool. The blade was on backwards for storage–fortunately I was sharp enough to look at that and say “that doesn’t seem right”. Also my wall now has penetrating oil on it.

I’m glad it was the hot water side of the sink meaning I was able to turn off just the hot water and not all the water to the house. I don’t generally like fix-it stuff, but when I started the project yesterday, I thought “this is way better than being at work”. Today I’m not so sure.

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