2021-12-17 — Washed Away, Water and Soul

I’m struggling.

A lot.

I’ll get to that…

I had told several people I’d get their cars fixed today, and when the weather report said it was going to be rainy today, I basically ignored it because I had cars to fix, and because of the high cost of fixing the bulldozer. Well… hoping to fix the bulldozer.

I should have just called the day and not gone out. What resulted was a pretty awful day. The first job that should have taken an hour and a half took about 4, and while only mildly wet and moderately cold for 95% of the job, the heavens opened up and dumped so forcefully, that waves of water gushed down the driveway and washed into me while I was under the car trying to button it up.

My sweatpants and and heavy winter sweatshirt soaked up the water like sponges, and there I lay for another 5 or 10 minutes in puddles of water trying to button it up.

It was a really frustrating job, and ending that way was… not fun.

2007 Lexus RX350 oil leak job… I fixed that one but found another leak right after I finished fixing that one, which means that whole job needs to be done all over again to fix the other one.

Lovely.

I’m not volunteering for that one, though. Not a chance.

I tried to warm up in my van. I had a change of clothes, which I changed into, so that was good. I was already so far behind that the day was… nearly gone. But i had four more jobs still. I was able to postpone the next one, at the customer’s suggestion, thankfully. Then I drove 45 minutes south to do a battery/diagnostic job because they were trying to drive to Dallas, and I’d promised them I’d get the car going, and it was only a battery job (and I also figured out why the battery died. Their fan shorted out and stayed on, draining the battery down to zero).

That was a 2013 Range Rover Evoque.

Why do people buy Land Rovers? They’re terrible. They’re expensive, unreliable, expensive, unreliable, expensive, unreliable, and expensive.

What’s the upside?

Anyway, fortunately, I was able to postpone the last two jobs because by then it was like 6:30, and I was way down south in far east Fayetteville.

Really frustrating day. Didn’t get much of anything else done. My positivity is gone. I’m discouraged. Tired. Struggling.

The normal cycle.

Until I can make peace with what’s happened with my life the last 13 years, I’m afraid I’m gonna cycle through this again and again and again. I just can’t seem to make peace with it. I do okay for a little while, but it’s always there, and I live with it’s awful consequences every day, and they’re just getting worse and worse.

I get hope and encouragement in other areas of my life, things I’m trying to accomplish, the good I’m trying to do, but when things get hard, when obstacles get in the way of the hopes I’m still holding on to… the anger and discouragement and devastation of what’s happened to everything I hoped for these last 13 years… all those painful feelings return, and the cycle runs round and round again.

And here I am. I’m angry. I’m discouraged. I’m afraid. Some of my worst fears have come true, and all that while doing my best to do what I thought was right. I trusted god. I followed him. I sacrificed so many hopes and dreams. For what?

Nothing. I trusted god for nothing. It was a waste. A waste that stole many of the most precious years of my life and many of the most precious experiences I’d hoped to have had that I could have had had I not trusted in that crap.

Anyway, sorry. I’m frustrated and angry. These are the feelings I fight off regularly while I try to focus on the good I can still do for the world. Even when I’m in good spirits, this is all still there. My perspective is still the same. I still feel like it’s been a wasted life of lost hopes and dreams and opportunities, having lost some of my deepest. The only difference when I’m in a good space is that I’m better able to focus on what I can do from here, but I still feel the same about what’s happened.

Anyway, I’ll get back to positive, but I’m afraid I’m going to continue being this up-and-down yoyo of emotion until I can come to terms with this huge loss in my life that I’m feeling more poignantly now than I ever have.

Rough day.