Dealing with anxiety of occasional life's issues through self empowerment
- Chutema
- Jan 19
- 5 min read
If you don't know about me yet or haven't read my autobiography book(buy here), I'm all about surviving your timeline, and figuring out how to deal with life's issues no matter what comes around. For example, when it comes to owning rental properties, I'm going to be honest with you, it's not for everyone, especially if you're not handy.
Ever since I got into real estate back in the late 90's, owning rental properties have given me so many learning opportunities in plumbing, electrical, carpentry, and the human connections of meeting all walks of life. As a landlord, you not only have tenants issues, but when something goes wrong, it's up to you to solve the problem and keep everyone happy. Sometimes dealing with repair people is worse than tenants, because of a number of reasons, including not showing up, too expense, incompetent, or incapable of completing the job.
As I got to know some good and honest repair people, watching them perform different jobs on my properties, motivated me to learn how to do things on my own. Reading books, watching how to videos, and tackling on small repairs, I became a handyperson. Most of the repairs were basic and didn't require a lot of time or major effort to do. They included things like replacing light switches, painting, replacing faucets, repairing broken door and cabinet hinges, and replacing door locks to mention a few. Any major repairs, I had to call in professional help, and as I got more confident in my abilities, replacing toilets and sinks became an easy thing to do. Once you have confident in yourself, there are lots of minor repairs you can actually do without hiring someone, saving you lots of money.
Go through life learning and never stop learning, including how to deal with the anxiety of the occasional property maintenance issues. Unless you have a contract with a building maintenance company, you will be responsible to fix or solve every building issues. During my long holiday weekend, Martin Luther King observance day, the heating system at my rental property stopped working. The calls and text were coming in, it was on Saturday morning and I was already on my way to Boston, MA with my girlfriend at 9am. I couldn't turn around so we rushed back after our appointment and I finally went to address the problem around 3pm that Saturday afternoon. Keep in mind, the weather this week was cold so I was concern for any possible damages to the heating pipes and the well being of my tenants who are mostly young college students and recent grad students. And on top of that a snow storm is coming in by Sunday night bringing in low teen temperatures. My blood pressure at this point is rising because it's a long weekend and it will be very expensive to call a repair company.
In 2015, I was lucky to have a plumber friend help me installed a new boiler system - on demand combination heating system, that is very efficient and low cost to operate. The unit is designed to be hung on the wall in the basement and exhaust can be piped outside without using a chimney flute. It supposed to be low maintenance but it looks very high tech but I can't complain because it's been ten years and this is the first time I had issues with it.
It's about three hours later since I unplug the unit, took the front cover off, descaled the heating section of the unit, and did all the necessary cleaning to filters, screen, and traps. These units require you to do regular maintenance to descale the inside heating elements to get rid of lime buildup. You basically get a five gallon bucket, attach a short hose end to a cold water inlet of the heating unit and the other end attach to a pump that sits in a bucket, connect another short hose end to a hot water outlet of the heating unit and let the other end sit in the same bucket. You then pour three or four gallons of distill white vinegar into the bucket, double check power is off, main water supply is off, hot and cold valves are shut before you start to pump and recycling the vinegar into the unit. This process should take minimum thirty to forty five minutes for the vinegar to descale all the elements. What's great about this, all these steps I learned from Utube. Make sure you watch the complete step by step video of everything before you start any repair jobs. Where would we be without Utube, because life is so much easier now, you can watch how to videos on practically anything that needs repairing.
Once everything was cleaned, descaled, and front cover put back together, and all the valves are turned back on, time to turn on the power again. Usually these units corrects itself, but it wasn't my lucky night, the unit kept trying to run then stopped then run again, so frustrating. I called one of my longtime friend to help me out over the phone because the unit had an error code E012. Four hours later, after so many do this, do that, we finally got the unit to stay running and all the zone pipes got hot. Perfect timing because I had a prior engagement that I had promised to attend from 7pm to 11pm. My mind was not focused while at the event because I was waiting for one of tenants to call me if the heating unit stopped working.
Be prepare to handle stresses in life and never stop solving your problems, you will find a way eventually, just never give up. Remember, you learn from trials and errors, and failures make you better if you never give up. As I expected, the unit did shut off overnight and the next day on Sunday morning I got up around 5am. I did more research online and got dressed and went to my rental property at around 7am and started trouble shooting again. This time my good friend came and helped me around 9am and we were able to figure out what the problem was. My friend who is in the heating business said that he can get the part I needed tomorrow even though it's a holiday and that we can keep restarting the unit if it shuts down again.
What a turn of event a day can make, my anxiety was almost gone, knowing that tomorrow I can replace the heating element and hopefully don't need to replace the whole heating unit. My Sunday morning was complete and destressed after attending my usual Sunday morning Wing Chun class from 10am to 12pm. Doing extra life activities outside of work, getting in some daily exercises, and working on mindfulness will help you handle some of life's challenges. When you encounter a normal life event whether big or small, don't run from it or put it off, instead try to figure it out. Find comfort with those closest to you and support you unconditionally. Learn as much as you can everyday, realize how blessed you are to have all of life's anxieties. As you age, you should start to think about your time on earth, nothing should keep you down or give you anxiety, everyday you are living the dream and surviving your timeline!
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