2020-06-23 — A Little Rough, Again

Sometimes I’m a little self conscious with how often I seem to struggle and have tough days. When I open up a blank post and get ready to write, I think about my day, and so often my first thought is: “Man, it was a rough day.”

But that seems to be a near daily occurrence (that’s at least what it feels like as self conscious as I am about what other people think of me), and then little worries run through my brain about what people who read these posts might be thinking as they read through the brief synopses of my life and see the patterns. Things like: “Man, he’s an emotional mess, up and down and up and down.” (by the way, the very act of using the phrase “up and down” is an act of concealment of my fear of being labeled with some sort of emotional/psychological/cognitive disorder, such as bi-polar or on the autism spectrum or something like that. Not that there’s anything wrong with having a disorder, I’m just… afraid of people applying those labels to me because somehow I think it’ll mean that people see me as less than), Or “He complains a lot.” Or “He can barely see anything more than the negative.” Or “Why doesn’t he just get it together? My goodness, it’s not that hard to do some of those things he needs to do. Just do them!”

However I might be or look, though… it’s my reality, and whatever it is, it is, and there’s no sense in pretending otherwise. This is me, raw.

Granted, I haven’t managed to be 100% transparent yet, but I’m getting closer and closer. It’s hard when other people’s lives are so intricately connected with my own. How do I let it all hang out without parading other people’s lives out along with my own? Even vagueness of language is still quite telling to those who are closer to my life. They know who the other parties to a given experience are. So that’s hard. And people reading probably know when I’m referring to them.

Anyway, so here I am, another day, another tough one. I actually lost money again today, I think. One of the jobs we did yesterday, one of my tech’s did, that is, was replace a radiator. He’d overheated because the radiator had a massive crack and was pouring out coolant. I told him not to drive it, but he’d lost his business and his other job, and he was broke, and he didn’t have any money, so he tried to use the van anyway, filling it with water along the way. But what happened? I think he ruined the vehicle. After my tech put the radiator in and started the van, it blew the coolant out the overflow and sounded like the whole motor was shot. The poor gentleman (a multiple returning customer) spent about $400 only to find out in the end that the car was ruined. He begged me to give him some kind of refund, which I did, basically giving him back everything I made on the job and giving him a warning: Next time I tell you not to drive the car, don’t drive it.

Anyway, so the day started off with a $90 loss. Then I did a quick alternator job in Springdale and made about $110 on that. Then I went to a car that one of my previous techs had done a while back and found that the majority of the bolts that had to be removed to do the job were all lose, some of them quite loose. At first, I thought that was the whole problem (he’d replaced the alternator, but the battery wasn’t getting charged). When I fired up the vehicle, the alternator seemed to be doing fine, but then when it got hot, the charging voltage dropped down into bad-alternator range, so I replaced the alternator as a warranty job, started it back up, thought I was fine, and then again, once it got hot, it dropped down to bad-alternator range.

I was so discouraged. That’s the third time in four days! It’s crazy. I don’t know if it’s a batch of bad alternator parts effecting the alternators or what. I, later that evening, called a friend of mine in a nearby town who owns a shop, and he said he’d had the same issues recently and was going to call me and ask if I’d had issues. In just the last week, he’d replaced I think four alternators in one car and three in the other. Finally, when he got the 4th alternator from a different supplier, all was fine (we usually use the same supplier–AutoZone, and it was the O’Reilly’s alternator that was the good one out of the bunch). So… now I’m wondering if I’m having the same issue. The universe seems to go in clusters, so it would both surprise me and not surprise me to have three charging issues where the computer is the issue and not the alternator, but that would be crazy.

I still don’t know what to do. The alternator didn’t test bad until it was hot, so bench testing it is useless. It’ll probably test fine every time because it’s cold. So what to do? I really don’t want to be looking up wiring diagrams and testing the entire charging circuit, including the computer for every charging issue I run into. That’s nuts. It’s almost never the computer.

Anyway, so I left him with a semi-working car and instructions to get his coolant topped off because it was low, and I told him I’d do some research into what might be going on, and I asked him to keep me posted. I guess we’ll see.

Then I went to a job where I’d replaced a shredded serpentine belt for him just a week before. The engine was absolutely smothered in oil the first time, and so I told him I didn’t know how long it was going to last on there before it came off again, given all the oil. There was oil everywhere, including all the pulleys.

I told him I’d replace the belt again for free if he bought the belt. The tensioner looked fine, so I don’t think that was at issue. I think it was just oil on everything causing it to slide off and shred. I didn’t want to charge him for putting it on again because I didn’t want to risk losing him as a customer (he’s used me several times), so I did the job for free, even though it wasn’t my fault that it had to be redone.

By that time, I was worn out and discouraged and had more I could have done, but I called it a day about 5:30 and headed home. There wasn’t enough work to have my tech or helper work today, so it was just me (my full-time tech chose to take the day off instead of do the little that we had, and my helper… he would have only been able to help in the morning, and… yeah… it was pretty bare.

I don’t know how it got to be almost 1 a.m. I was discouraged and melancholic for a bit–still am, I guess, wishing I had someone to come home to, someone to talk to and go through it all with… It’s nice to have you all. To some degree, y’all fill the void of someone to come home to.

I spent some time going over the news simultaneously feeling hopeful and discouraged at what I see going on in the world and in this country. I ate some food. I tried to hydrate a bit. I spent a good long while trying to get tomorrow scheduled and prepared for. I went for my run. I cut my hair. I took a shower (first shower in a long time. Yeah… I know it’s pretty nasty to some, but when you come home exhausted and covered in oil, and you’re gonna be covered in oil not but a handful of hours in the future… and you don’t stink much, then you’re just… yeah…

Think what you will… 🙃

So… that’s pretty much the day. It’s after 1 a.m. now. I’m ready for bed. Need to take a good, long drink, and then climb into bed. I’m still going strong on each of my areas. I didn’t swear again today, even with some pretty good provocation (including smashing my thumb), so I’m feeling pretty good about that. I can feel myself getting back to the way I used to be with swearing, where it was a very rare occasion to hear me swear. I’ve had no fliers, no pre-meditated. Nothing.

The scantily clad women in the ads on the news sites… they haven’t been the draw they would have been only a few months ago. I did feel a pull today, when I got home early, to go escape into TV or a movie. So, my thought from yesterday just got proven false. But I didn’t partake, so, my self discipline is winning out for the moment still.

Falling asleep… so here goes gratitude:

#1. I’m grateful that I made a little progress on my new list of stuff I’m working on (I brushed my teeth tonight. I often times only floss and don’t brush, so it’s a positive step toward getting back into the habit. I’m usually so tired that once I skipped a day, it snowballed, and now its me trying to get back to taking proper care of me teeth. But tonight, I did.

#2. I’m grateful to have had my first alternator job go fine.

#3. I’m grateful to have been able to get my hair cut. To have the skill and equipment to do it myself at my convenience instead of having to go to a place and make an appointment or something.

#4. I’m grateful that the last two or three times I’ve gone out running, I’ve been more automatic and less dreading it (not wanting to, for sure, but just sort of going.)

#5. I’m grateful…

Fell asleep again…

I’m grateful for… apples. I like apples. Tasty little things. I had three in a row today. So much apple it made my teeth hurt afterward, but they were quite good.

Okay, my lovelies. Little bits of progress today. I’ll make more tomorrow. I promise. Ever forward.

Loves and hugs.

Lift the World.

~ stephen