The morning I started off really rough. The people whose land I’d been interested in buying and was getting more and more excited about buying, after several days of back and forth, informed me that they were now logging the land and no longer going to be selling it the way that they were going to before, without realtors and everything.
Basically what that means is that every tree that’s larger than 2 in in diameter is going to be chopped down. That huge beautiful forest is going to get mostly destroyed.
And after that, they’re going to put it up for sale through a realtor, meaning that now with a destroyed forest, they’re probably going to ask even more for it because now it’s going to have a realtor at the helm.
😕
With all of the other areas of my life that just seem to be going nowhere, it hit really hard this morning to receive that message from the seller. I was actively asking questions, actively interested in the property, and then boom.
I guess they got tired of waiting to sell it and didn’t consider me a serious buyer? Or I guess if they’re already logging it, they must have had the plans in place because logging it starts today. (It’s Thursday morning, writing about yesterday.)
Either way, it was super disappointing and discouraging. Accurate or inaccurate, it just feels like every time something good might happen, the carpet gets pulled out from underneath me, and it all comes crashing down.
I just don’t understand. It’s so hard for me to try and move any direction anyway, why does every door get slammed in my face every time I have enough emotional energy to take a step?
It’s deflating. It’s discouraging. It’s devastating.
I was devastated yesterday morning after hearing the news. In the grand scheme of things, it’s something pretty trivial, but it’s not trivial at all to me with everything that I’ve been struggling with for the last several years.
It was such a great little piece of property. Just minutes up the road from where we are. Amazing price.
It’s so hard to get up the emotional energy to keep trying with pretty much anything these days.
So many doors slammed shut.
I’m just running out of steam, folks. Or maybe the better analogy is that I have run out of steam, and periodically I build up enough to make some feeble movements.
So that was the morning.
First car was a Chevy truck that had died while driving. Usually that particular model of Chevy truck has an issue with the distributor cap and rotor that causes dying while driving and cranking but not starting, but this time it turned out to be that the last mechanic to work on the car who fixed the fuel pump didn’t properly reconnect the electrical connector to the pump, so over time it had worked itself free. Took a little time to find the issue, but super easy fix.
Second car was a 2001 Jeep Cherokee 4.0 straight six vet was a no crank no start.
It was a doozy.
It acted like a dead short at the starter, but when I pulled the starter out and bench tested it, the starter was completely fine. Deducing down, the next most likely issue was an issue with the ignition, so I had the steering column covers pulled apart and checking wiring and everything, and I was able to prove that it wasn’t the ignition.
Then I noticed that every single time I nudged the fuse box, it powered the car back up again. Turn the key to try and start it, and the car would completely shut off, including all the power to the dash. Nudge the fuse box, and all the powered come back on, but As soon as you turn the key to start it, everything goes black again.
So I pulled the fuse box out of its little container, testing and retesting and testing and retesting and more testing trying to find what part of the fuse box was screwed up, which wires, which connections, and then I noticed something…
One of the times that I moved the fuse box, I bumped the negative battery cable and it powered the car back on.
😶
So I did a few tests, and sure enough, move the negative battery cable, and it powered right up.
The cable looks fine in every way, but there was a little connection box that was all very neatly, nicely, professionally taped up, so I pulled all the tape off, popped off the little box, and found that they had made it look all nice and neat on the outside, but on the inside, the connection was an absolute mess.
I ended up replacing both negative battery cables, and boom, started right up.
That has to be one of the most challenging chasedowns I have had that then turned out to be something extremely simple.
But at least I got it. Both of his broken cars are now fixed. 🥳
Second car was a guy who was having trouble getting a wheel lock off. What he didn’t tell me was that it was a style of wheel lock that I’ve never seen before. I don’t think I’ve ever been unsuccessful getting a wheel lock off the car because I know how to get them off. But this particular style has a spinning inner ring, so the method that I use to get it off wasn’t possible. I thought with it for like 45 minutes, probably, before finally giving up, not charging him, and heading off to the next car.
The next car was one that I’ve been trying to get to for a little while now, but it just hasn’t worked out. The gentleman needs struts, and he’s at a halfway house. I went over there, but he wasn’t there, so I guess we’ll do that one today.
Car number five for the day was way back up in centerton. The last two no goes were in Springdale.
Car number 5 was a crank no start, and it first it wouldn’t start, but I was able to get it to start after that. Idle was pretty nasty, so I cleaned the throttle body, in the idle evened out pretty nicely. Couldn’t get it to reproduce the problem after that, so we’ll cross our fingers and hope it’s good to go with that cleaned up throttle body.
They also had a second vehicle that was having issues, and no crank no start on a 2009 Chevy V6 truck.
That one I think might have fuse box issues because it sounds like there’s a short inside the fuse box or something because every time you turn the key, the fuel pump relay ticks on and off super quickly, causing the fuel pump to kick on and off super quickly as well.
They also have other issues that are connected to the fuse box. I did a bunch of testing, but eventually gave up because I still had a huge job on the schedule for the night, and I didn’t want to get sucked into another super long job, especially one that wasn’t on the schedule. I was just squeezing it in because they were having issues with it as well.
The last job of the night was a 2014 Toyota RAV4 that needed brakes. The pads were low, and the brake pedal was pulsating. It’s one that I went to a few days ago.
I wasn’t sure which rotors were pulsating, and so I guessed that it was going to be the fronts. If that didn’t fix the pulsating, then I would have eaten the cost of the rotors, but gratefully, I was right, so I was able to charge fully for the job. I didn’t finish that job until like 9:30 at night, so even though I needed to do brake pads on the rear, I’ll do those today.
I came home, eating a little bit on the way, and then just really heading for bed.
Things are really rough for me right now. I appreciate the encouragement from some of you. I’m trying to pull out. Trying to figure out how to have hope again.
It’s a weird way of talking about it I guess. I have hope, but they’re so little of it, or it seems so unlikely, that it may be feels more like a fool’s hope? I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it. I want to say that I’ve lost hope, but that feels somewhat dishonest because I still see hope inside of me, hope that somehow, someway, this hell that I live in right now, which is of my own making because if I could just change my perspectives and attitudes, I wouldn’t be in it anymore…
Anyway…
Trying to find hope and energy and motivation to try again. I’m just at that point where it’s emotionally overwhelming much of the time to even think about trying again.
But let’s go lift the world today, right?
Heaven knows I’m not the only one who needs it.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 