Why do I work so much?
I work so much because… part of me is still waiting for something that I thought was going to come to pass and wanted to come to pass and still want to come to pass but… hasn’t… and likely never will.
But I keep waiting…
It’s almost like being in a holding pattern.
I work so much because it’s what I know how to do. In the path that I envisioned that was best for preparing for the future I was working toward as well as a future of service, I needed a lot of money to be able to create the passive income desired in order to spend all of my time in the service of others.
What I know is that according to the metrics of that particular pathway, I’m still quite a few nickels short, so to speak. So… I know I need more money to accomplish the goal in that particular manner, so I work.
And work…
And work…
Why do I work so much?
Because I’ve spent who knows how many days and hours of my life trying to make progress in several different areas of my life where I’m struggling, significant life decisions that I keep trying to make and keep failing at making, failing so many times that just thinking about trying to go to work on them again is overwhelming, but I know I haven’t reached my financial goals, so I work.
It’s what I know how to do. It clearly is getting me closer to my financial goals, and thus, my service goals.
So I work.
And work…
And work…
Why do I work so much?
Because I’m afraid. I’m afraid that if I just cut loose right now, let the business go, and do my best to spend the rest of my life serving the way I want to serve, that all the money that I’ve saved and worked so hard to build up will be wasted incredibly quickly, and I’ll be starting over, once again so far far away from my goal of financial independence that would allow me to spend my life serving other people in the ways that I want to.
That’s why I work so much.
But it really is soul crushing. I’ve been doing work that feels like it’s slowly been crushing my soul ever since… I lost my position teaching at a private school 13+ years ago.
That’s a long time.
As I mentioned before, there are parts of what I do now that I enjoy. I love seeing people grateful for what I do for them. I love to teach interested customers how their cars work and how they can diagnose and fix them themselves. I like getting to know people of all different walks of life.
I still hold fast to my belief that most people in this world are just good people. Certainly, we are all flawed, but the vast majority of the people that I meet and communicate with are just good people. Right, left, center. Gay, straight, other. Black, white, green, whatever…
We are just good people.
But overall, it’s still crushing to me. I feel trapped. Sing it Mr. Mercury! “I want to break free!”
🙃
Here’s a quote that I remembered that perhaps encapsulates a bit of yesterday’s feelings:
“There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.” ~ Philip James Bailey
…
Let’s see, 81° was the high today. So that was… hot. 🙃
Four cars today…
The first one was going back to that 2007 Chevy truck that needed the starter– The one that had the wrong starter in the right box. That one went together relatively painlessly, so that was nice.
The second car was a 2005 Honda Odyssey that was way out in the middle of nowhere boonies. His description made it sound like it was definitely either the battery or the alternator, but when I got out there, it was clearly neither. Turned out to be a starter.
That’s one reason why I don’t like going to jobs in the middle of nowhere. It’s so hard to charge for the amount of time it really takes to go all the way out there, go out and find parts, come back etc. I always end up losing a lot of money, and then if they ever have issues again, or if there’s a warranty claim because the part goes bad or something, then I’m way back out there in the middle of nowhere.
I should just say no to those jobs, but honestly, it would probably take even more time to look up every address ahead of time to make sure it wasn’t too far away.
So he needed a starter, but on my way to pick up a starter was another job that needed to be done, so I told the Honda Odyssey gentleman that I wouldn’t be back right away. So I went to the other vehicle that was on the way to the parts supplier because I didn’t want to drive all the way there, and then all the way back to my Odyssey customer and then all the way back down to the other job again and then all the way back up north again. So I instead went directly to job number three, diagnosed it is about alternator, had it all buttoned up, turned it on, and it seemed to be doing great, but then the charging went down, and down, and down until it wasn’t really charging at all.
Great.
That means I got the diagnosis wrong, and that means that there are gremlins in the system, either bad wiring somewhere or a bad computer.
Lovely.
So now I’ve spent all that time installing a brand new alternator that wasn’t even needed, which means I’m going to eat a whole bunch of money because I’m not going to make my customer pay for something that I did with a bad diagnosis.
So I started doing some reading about what the common issues might be if the voltage drops like that after starting just fine and does so with two alternators in row. Most of the mechanics who use the platform that I do said that it was just another bad alternator out of the box, and it would just need to be swapped out again.
But something one of the mechanics said caught my attention, and it reminded me of something that happened probably two years ago!
I remembered working on an older Toyota, maybe Camry, maybe Avalon, something like that, where the alternator seemed to be bad, and then I realized that the idle was incredibly low. Like 250 RPMs (normal cars idle RPMs once warm are going to be somewhere between 650 and 800, I would guess. But this was around 200 or 250 or so.).
So I put down the gas pedal a little bit, and lo and behold!
The alternator started charging properly. 🙃
Blasted Toyota excellence!!!
I don’t think there’s a car on the planet built so well that it can idle without dying at 250 freaking RPMs. I think The cars from probably pretty much every other make on the planet would just die once they got below 400 RPMs. But not Toyotas! Those crazy things will run after you drop them off a building and drown them in the ocean and all that other good stuff that those British guys did to that poor Toyota Hilux. 😆
Anyway, so I cleaned the throttle body, which is what fixed the last Toyota that had this issue, and there it went idle was good again. And with the idle good, the alternator was charging properly, and boom, there you go. So I gave the customer the option of having me pull out the new alternator that I just put in and putting the old one back in and not charging him for the new alternator at all, or leaving in the new alternator and knocking $150 off my bill.
He chose the latter option, and I wasted a lot of time, but still made some money in the end, Even though it wasn’t much for the time I put in. 🙃
After that, I picked up the starter from the Fayetteville AutoZone on MLK, drove all the way back out into the middle of the boonies, installed the starter on the 2005 Honda Odyssey, and that went relatively well, gratefully, and then headed up north.
My fourth job of the day postponed as I was getting ready to head over to her, so I stopped over by the transmission shop that’s got my Ford van to update the owner of the shop on what I had found about the stripped out bolt and leaking pan and metal shavings in the bell housing. He’s getting closer to having my van on his docket, so that’s nice. Though, I’m not really excited about the bill. 🙃
I guess on the plus side, since I haven’t been using that van as my work van, all the money that I’m paying to have it fixed will get to be tax deductibled. So though that won’t cover all my costs, it will at least help a little bit.
The last car of the day was another Chevy Silverado. This one with an overheating problem, and I found that his dad in the past had Jimmy rigged a fix on one of the heater hose lines, and that Jimmy rigged to fix had finally failed, causing the truck to significantly overheat.
Hopefully the truck itself is still okay.
The part wasn’t available at the parts supplier, so I gave him the discount, even though I spent plenty of time there and actually diagnosed two different cars while I was there, and I said I would come back tomorrow and get it all fixed up.
I managed to get home while it was still light outside, and ate dinner with my mama, and then I headed down to The woods by the mailboxes to spend more time de-vining and cleaning up the woods.
I made some pretty good progress, and I saw a really cute baby bunny that was probably about the size of three of my fists together. Something like that. It was just hanging around, as if it didn’t know what to do. It didn’t seem to be all that scared of me. By that time, though, it was dark outside, and I was doing all of the work in the dark with my head lamp, so maybe you didn’t really understand what I even was because all it could see was a bright light pointing at it.
Who knows.
Cute little thing, though. 🥰
But that brings to mind the turkey truck I drove by today. With my window down staring into the eyes of those poor turkeys looking back at me, on the way to being slaughtered. Feathers and absolute mess. Squished into cages far too small.
Heartbreaking to see how we treat creatures that we turn into our food.
(sigh)
For those of you who aren’t from Arkansas, Tyson world headquarters is here, and bird raising is a major thing out here.
Anyway, there you go.
I made some really good progress in the woods, so that’s nice.
It’s going to rain tomorrow, though probably not that much. I’ve got to get my brakes done, and my shelves fell over probably four or five times today.
I completely forgot about them having broken free yesterday, so they came crashing down again today, and I was like oh crap I forgot to fix that. So several times today they can crashing down, and they are still not fixed.
I’ve got to get those fixed, and I’ve got to get my brakes fixed ASAP before they start grinding in the rear. They’re about to grind at any moment.
Time for bed, though. It’s 11:22 p.m., And I was hoping to be in bed an hour and a half ago, so I could get up and make some progress on the van.
Oh well. It is what it is. G’night, my lovelies. 😊
Oh! I saw YouTube video yesterday, and the woman making the video used my phrase!!!
My lovelies!
I mean, I guess I probably shouldn’t be surprised that I’m not the only person to use that, but It was still weird to hear come out of someone else’s mouth.
It’s… my phrase. 🙃
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 