2020-05-05 — To Date or Not to Date

Just crossed my mind as I put the date in the title that it’s Cinco de Mayo.

Nice. 🙂

I don’t even remember what holiday it is. I think I used to think it was Mexico’s independence day, but I later learned it wasn’t?

Or something like that.

And in the time it’s taken me to write all that, I’m sure I could’ve just educated myself, but then you wouldn’t get to read this little flowing brain dump. 😁

Aaaaaaanyway… happy Tuesday peopleses. 😊

So… I seem to have had several days in a row of David saving my proverbial butt, as far as money made is concerned.

Thank you, David!

I worked for like 12 hours today, and of myself, made something like $80. I spent something like four or five hours this morning buttoning up the last of what one of my previous mechanics had messed up out in the middle of nowhere Missouri. All told, I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent 15-20 hours… or more… cleaning up that mess.

Yikes. 😬

But… it’s done now, so that’s good. Water under the bridge, over the waterfall, and gone (Although I didn’t feel like that while I was there. Everything just seemed to go wrong, again, and I would have had to start over every 0.2583 miliseconds if I’d started my daily ticker for the number of days I’d made it through without cursing.

🙃

After that, I spent some time working on another car, and was grateful to have David show up just in time to help diagnose it. I was just barely getting started with it, and he showed up just in time to bring a little of energy to my burned out self. He also had a key tool we needed. It was another Mustang (3rd in the last week?). This one, though, was a GT with a racing clutch, but it was running on 7 cylinders, and what we found out was that it had likely had a nitrous system in it (with the previous owner), and they’d totally ruined the pistons. Being damaged as they were, a piece of metal had broken off inside, and it had mashed the spark plug to bits. So… basically the engine was significantly damaged because of it, but we threw another plug in there, and it’ll run for the time being. Might even run for a while. Who knows.

Have been having to give lots of really bad news lately, with respect to cars. 🙁

After that Mustang, I did a freebie. A returning customer said she had something dragging from her car, and it was making a loud noise, and I went over there, and her exhaust had busted in half. There wasn’t anything I could reasonably do, so I gave her a recommendation for a shop and charged her nothing, but she tipped me $20, and that was nice of her.

I struck out again on my last job. 🙃

But first I went to visit Miguel at his shop because my job was over by there, and we chatted for a bit.

Then I went to a pretty much mint condition Dodge Charger 6.1 (only made 1000 of them) up in Bella Vista. He needed his shifter assembly spring fixed, but I chickened out. The plastic pieces weren’t coming out easily, and the last thing I needed was to break something on an immaculate condition vehicle that was the owner’s absolute baby.

So… I didn’t charge him anything, and we both agreed it might be better to take it to the dealer to have it done. He had free towing, so it was no big deal. Lost money. Lost time, yes

But I don’t care a lick.

With those kinds of things, I feel like I’m a winner just to get out of it without causing damage and with a relatively happy customer.

So… let’s see… Despite my language challenges today, I think I’ve been happier lately. And the guy I gave all those DVDs to yesterday sent me another thank-you message this morning, so that was nice, too; and the Mustang people told me I should charge more than I did, which was also nice. And the exhaust lady gave me the tip when I wasn’t going to charge anything, so that was all nice.

Well… I’m drawing a blank.

I guess… I guess I could go this direction…

So, as you know, I’ve been thinking about the whole dating thing a little bit. I’m a little gun shy to try the online stuff again, for reasons I’ll get to shortly, but the pickins be slim locally, so online seems to be the more plausible route.

Except or this (and here’s one of those reasons): One of my concerns with online dating can probably be summed up nicely by sharing what a girl I took out a couple years ago said to me, a statement that has reverberated around the cavern of my brain over and over and over and over again.

“I’m glad you don’t look like your pictures.”

I’ve wondered why so few people respond to me (physical attraction wise) online while so many in person do. Maybe I don’t look like my pictures. I mean, I do just fine in person (aside from my nerves). I know I’m not a model, but it’s quite common to find women stealing looks and for people to tell me that x woman whom they were just with thinks I’m attractive.

So what’s the deal with my pictures?

I don’t understand, and it’s a bit discouraging because it appears to be the reality, given my experience.

Anyway, so there’s that part. Then there’s the part that says what girl is going to want me right now anyway? I’m not ready to leave behind the gospel I’ve loved and trusted. Nor am I ready to embrace it. I don’t know which way I’ll go.

That’s sort of a big deal in a long-term committed relationship.

So… yeah. There’s that, too.

The only time I’ve ever tried dating a person who wasn’t LDS, she was ready for sex after two dates, and I’ll admit it was surely tempting, but… no. (I fully recognize that N=1, and that’s one random non LDS person out of many billion who are each unique individuals, and one doesn’t represent the masses… It was just a little shock to this naive little boy here. And that’s not to say that all LDS girls have the same standards. It’s just nice to date in a culture where general standards are sort of understood ahead of time, and you’re less likely to run into unexpected differences in standards).

I mean sure, just thinking about that, my body likes the idea. There’s a part of me that wants that, to go sample everything, in fact. I think you’re probably gonna find that appetite in most men, honestly. But there’s a deeper part of me that says, no: I want the woman who will stand by my side for the next 50+ years. I want someone I can lean on and be there for her to lean on. I want someone with whom I can work hard to make the world a better place. I don’t want the life of a perpetual bachelor or womanizer. Nor do I want the life of a celibate priest.

Anyway, I’ll probably write a whole post about my thoughts on human relationships, emotional connections, sexual connections, etc. We’ll see. Not on the top of my priority list, but certainly something I’m probably going to war game through as I gut out my thoughts and feelings and principles about all sorts of things that are a part of this life.

So, yeah… dating. Am I even ready? Should I get my crap more together before I try again? Should I just go for it and let it all fall as it may? That’s probably what I’ll end up doing, the latter of the two. I’m still me, whatever philosophy or doctrine of man or god I subscribe to. Me is me and always will be.

It’s simple: I want to be who I want to be, from the depths of who I am (loving, caring, compassionate, courageous, patient, kind, selfless, honest, open, vulnerable, etc.) because that’s who I want to be, not because any philosophy of god or man told me to be so. I’m always gonna be me.

So wherever I do end up, you can bet it’s gonna be a place that supports those things. Otherwise you won’t find me in any “place” at all.

Anyway… not sure how many people will be interested in a man in the midst of “crisis,” but I guess we’ll find out.

Bring. It. On.

On that note…

#1. I’m grateful that the mustang people were so cool about the work we did for them, even when the diagnosis was not a happy one. It’s not often you have a customer tell you to charge more.

#2. I’m grateful that I was able to stay pretty positive today (at least the rest of the day after the first car was done 😁).

#3. I’m grateful that I have this arena to spill my guts in, and I hope that you find reassurance, hope, inspiration, determination, or any number of other beneficial things for you. (feel free to make suggestions if you think there are things I can do to better serve y’all in what I write, or if there are things that you feel will better serve me.).

#4. I’m grateful to be at the end of another day having kept the commitments in each of the four areas I’ve been working on so far.

30, 38, 29, 3.

One of the things that’s been great about it is that I don’t really think much about it during the day, so I’m not “white knuckling” it, as the saying goes. (Sure there are times when I want my sugar fix, or movie fix, or porn fix, but I abstain, and after a bit, the jonesing is gone.

So I’m not sitting counting the days: I’m just living and trying to do good, and I’m coming to the end of the day having succeeded.

I actually have to look up each day what numbers I’m at because I don’t know. I only know one I look them up to report to y’all, so that’s nice, too.

#5. I’m grateful to be a bit happier and a bit lighter lately.

#6. I’m grateful for the principle of the top things to be done in a day and putting those first, like I explained in greater detail in a previous post. I got some things done today only because of my Top 3 list.

Well, peeps. Happy ending to another journal entry.

Loves and hugs to all.

Lift the World.

~ stephen