Hiya, folks,
It’s been a long long day. It’s 1:50 a.m. right now as I put fingers to keys. I didn’t get to bed until late again last night. On the bright side, I did hit snooze about 8,000 times… sleeping in 15-minute bursts between alarms, I think I was checking to see if I missed calls or texts or whatnot, before then passing out again for another 15…
That extra two hours-ish of sleep was super needed. I just don’t get enough sleep. I’ll be sleeping in tomorrow, though. You’d better believe it.
Worked my tail off today. Didn’t get home until after 10. I still haven’t showered. I’m covered in oil. My last job of the day absolutely kicked my trash. It was I think what turned into a six-hour starter job, and do you know what? By the time I finished the job, I think around 9 something, guess what? The car still wouldn’t start.
Yeah.
Same symptoms as before, even. One loud click.
Power to the starter, but… no start. No frozen pulleys. Engine not locked up… but… no start. Ugh. Right now that puts us at perhaps a bad starter out of the box, or perhaps there’s a messed up flywheel? I don’t know. It’s crazy. It kicked my butt six ways from Sunday.
But I didn’t yell. Not once. I did get very angry at one point, and there was an accidental flier that slipped out, but I didn’t yell. And given that it seemed like every step of that job was a nightmare, lasting 6 hours and being completely ridiculous, I actually… well… I did well compared to what I might have done in the past. So… though I was wanting to not get mad at all, I did make progress. And I’ll take that for the time being. Progress, not perfection all at once.
Fear and anger are the two biggies I’m gonna focus my attention on, and honestly, I think fear is the catalyst to anger in a lot of ways. Maybe I’ll write about that one of these days. We’ll see.
Anyway, so… a couple of fairly easy jobs, followed by that nightmare and then rescheduling other jobs until Monday because it was so late already. I got home even later than would have been normal because the drive home included a 10-minute or so detour because Highway 62 (the highway that leads from town to Haven Hill was closed for… I don’t know what… lots and lots of flashing lights.
It was a bit of a rough day in a lot of ways, actually. I had this… feeling in my chest that I couldn’t get rid of for most of the morning. Same feeling from last night. Then it was gone for several hours, and now it’s back, but only back a tiny bit… I couldn’t explain it for a while… just felt… ugh… heavy, not quite anxious, but… icky. I woke up with it, tried to get rid of it, but it just wouldn’t be gone until probably around noon. That’s when I got my reprieve.
Anyway, I’m probably not making much sense.
#1. I’m grateful that the people with the last two cars of the day were cool about rescheduling for Monday.
#2. I’m grateful that I did get that long reprieve from that feeling today, and that I only feel it a little.
#3. I’m grateful to be continuing to make progress in my personal growth goals. I’m gonna spend some good time tomorrow working on those–writing things out, making plans, etc.
#4. I’m grateful that I have a shower and soap and that I can get clean tonight.
#5. I’m grateful for the people I did the last job for. They supplied me with bottle after bottle of cold water and two super tasty philly cheese steaks, as well as fries. If it weren’t for them, I’d be totally screwed up right now, body and mind.
#1. Need to be better at keeping boundaries I set.
#2. Want to be better at staying calm when situations could easily be frustrating.
#3. Want to be better at taking breaks when working, get my head cleared, eat food, drink water, etc. I tend to just go, go, go until it’s done an then collapse in a heap.
Folks, onward.
Lift the World.
~ stephen
Lift the World 