Yikes! It’s been a week. 😬
Sorry!!!
I’m not in a good space. Haven’t been for a while. I’m just burned out and overwhelmed, and my brain doesn’t seem to be working properly to figure out what I’m doing.
Not sure exactly what’s going on.
I’m not going to try and go back and write about each day this last week. I’m just going to summarize the week.
I’ve been taking it a lot easier, not doing very much on the car fixing front. If it’s three cars on the sixth a 2013 Chevy spark that she had parked last fall because the battery kept draining down. I went out there and figured out that she had a parasitic draw in her rear wiper motor assembly or something like that. She never uses the rear wiper, so I just pulled the fuse out, and she’s going to get herself a new battery and be good. Next was a 2005 Ford e150 with ignition issues. She’s going to need the whole steering column taken apart in order to replace a couple of plastic parts that broke inside. Dumb design.
The last one on Tuesday was a 2005 Nissan Xterra. He just wanted me to replace a camshaft position sensor that he had been able to remove, but couldn’t put the new one back in. Gratefully, it went pretty well, and that was it for the day.
I spent a massive chunk of the week studying for the AC exam so I could legally perform AC stuff. The certification actually allows me to do AC stuff on any AC system pretty much anywhere, whether it’s small appliances all the way up to huge commercial and industrial units.
😶
All that just trying to help my nephew. Guess I got in a little over my head. 🙃
Wednesday I did two cars. A 2003 Honda Civic that had the brake lights stuck on, which turned out to just be the stupid little bushing on the back of the brake pedal, and then a 2002 Hyundai Elantra.
I think the Elantra just needed a battery, but I’m not remembering at this point.
Thursday was two more cars a starter in a 2005 Ford f150 and a bad battery in a 2016 Ford Taurus.
Friday I just did one car, replacing an alternator in a 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee. I went to one other car, but I don’t think I charged them anything. Can’t remember what the car was or what I did.
One of my friends had to fire one of his employees at work. He’d been poisoning the atmosphere of the business, and that’s… crappy.
Everywhere I turn, small businesses are struggling to find anyone who’s willing to work. So many people just want everything all at once right now. Everyone wants to start out making a whole bunch of money right away, Even though they don’t have any experience. Personally, I blame the media in the government for that. Telling everyone they should earn a lot more than what they actually deserve simply because they’re alive and deserve it.
No, you’ve got to work up to it. You’ve got to build skills. He’s got to have something valuable to offer.
The entitlement attitude just seems to be getting worse and worse and worse.
And it’s our government, media, and our education institutions that are doing it, in my opinion.
Saturday I did three cars. I installed a tow hitch on a 2022 GMC terrain. And then I did a pre-purchase inspection on a 2014 Ford F-150, a very long pre-purchase inspection. Ended up taking two hours because he wanted me just to keep going.
It only have like 75,000 miles, but it had all sorts of issues.
Cars nowadays are having more and more and more problems. I don’t know if I would buy anything newer than 2015 right now. Seems like everything that’s come out in the last decade or so is just junk. Almost doesn’t matter who the manufacturer is. Seems like everybody’s got problems everywhere all the time.
It’s nuts.
I don’t know if it’s just planned obsolescence gone crazy, or if it’s too many new technologies that people are trying to incorporate all at once, or a combination of the two or just carelessness… who knows. Humans have been making cars for 150 years ish. There’s no reason to have this many problems.
So I studied and studied and studied and studied for the AC stuff. Ended up doing over a hundred modules online after the book I bought turned out to be an absolute waste. I passed the test, but the message I got was that I didn’t pass the test even though I got a passing score, so I sent them a message trying to figure out what on earth is going on.
After everything, I finally given up because even though I’ve bought a bunch of stuff to be able to do the job, after going through everything, I’m realizing that there’s still a bunch more equipment that I would need to buy to be able to do the job. 😕
Maybe I’ll still do it, but I certainly won’t be able to save my nephew really any money at all. By the time I’ve bought everything I need, it’ll be as much or more than what he was quoted which was already an exorbitant price.
I’ve spent so much time studying. 🙃
I’d also spend a lot of time hanging out with Miguel at his shop and whatnot.
And Sunday I spent most of the day trying to clean up my room and do paperwork. Trying to simplify. Trying to de-stressify my life.
All the gospel religious stuff that I was starting to go back to, I’ve sort of shoved back away again. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling crappy. I don’t know.
I’m hanging in there, but that’s about it right now.
At least I’m not working so much. Wish it were helping on the emotional health side of things.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 