(written on the 11th)
I forgot to mention that last night I listed a bunch of stuff for sale on Marketplace–both chainsaws from The failed Tree Service business, my 2010 E350 van, the generator that came out of Rover, and the dog House loaf that I forgot to put back in before taking it to the scrap yard.
Had a young man come down from Missouri first thing in the morning to buy My arborist chainsaw. He would have bought my other chainsaw had I posted it a day earlier, but he had just bought a brand new 391, paying the same price for the new one as he could have gotten my 462c for.
Both our losses.
Oh well.
My mom was on the hill working in the garden To help the family, so she stopped by to chat while I was there with the young man who was interested in buying the chainsaw.
We chatted for a good little while, and the young man went and got some cash, came back, and bought the arborists saw for my asking price of $550.
It was nice to get my asking price.
My mom and I chatted for probably an hour, or so, during which time I made the decision To go on the trip that we had talked about: We’re going to reprise last year’s trip that we took across the West. We might do it a little slower this time and take a couple of months instead of 6 weeks, or something like that. Who knows. We’ll play it by ear.
Looks like our leaving time will be either end of August or the first part of September.
Haven’t planned a route yet.
Finally got back to putting the second coat of paint on ET, and… It was rough.
I started out painting the harder places that required the paintbrush, since I was using The roller and brush method. I figured since it was my last coat, I would rather have The trim done first and then roll the bigger parts, so I spent the next I don’t know how long, hours, painting all the challenging places with the brush before turning to the roller.
The paint roller that I was using before had dried sufficiently that it needed lots of work with solvents to get the roller back into usable shape, despite having put it in a bag. I should have put it in a Ziploc bag. I actually have some. Didn’t even think about that until now.
😕
It had been a great roller, so I figured I would give it a shot trying to get it back to the condition it was before, as enough air had crept in to the way I had it sealed to dry it out a little bit.
I tried and tried, but eventually, I failed.
So I went and got another roller, and started painting, but immediately, I noticed there were fibers stuck in the paint from the roller. I had had rollers I’d used in the past do that, cheap ones, and I didn’t know if these were cheap or not, as they were just leftovers from The painting storage been in our garage.
So I cleaned off everything that I had just painted so the fibers weren’t in it, went and got more rollers, and tried again, but again, fibers everywhere.
😕
There were fewer fibers, and it almost looked normal, so I went ahead with it.
What I didn’t realize was that one of the reasons why there were so many fibers was that the paint was super tacky where I had painted with the brush, and everywhere I was overlapping, it was pulling fibers out of the roller.
It looked absolutely awful.
Looks absolutely awful.
It’s not just awful to my standards: It’s just plain awful awful awful.
It was so discouraging to have spent so many hours working on this van, so many hours trying to sand off the rust. It’s been a project that’s been ongoing for over a year.
And it’s so discouraging to have spent so many hours, 30? On something that looks like absolute trash. And that’s not even hyperbole. It’s garbage.
Why is it garbage? Because I’ve lost my ability to think intelligently about stuff. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m constantly in overload/survival mode and am just doing well to survive a day without having a meltdown, Or what it is, Don’t seem able to process through and recognize the consequences of the decisions I’m making or foresee potential obstacles or challenges or whatever with the approaches I’m choosing.
Why does it look like absolute garbage? Because I tried to paint it in a field instead of a garage, in hot weather, with paint that was getting thicker and thicker and thicker as it evaporated. No paint thinner. Drying to tacky in probably less than a minute.
It was stupid. Stupid to think that I could make anything look halfway decent in those conditions.
So I reaped the rewards of terrible decision making.
Ready, fire, aim.
I do that over and over because that’s all I’ve got. I don’t have the bandwidth to think and plan anymore. I’m just surviving. Go, go, go.
And what’s the result? About what you’d expect. So much time and effort and energy expended for something that looks like absolute trash. Not just all the little fibers from the rollers in the paint. It literally looks like an 8-year-old did it. Thick spots, thin spots, brush stroke marks, weird textures all over. Runs. Drips.
It looks like absolute garbage.
And what about taping it off? No, I didn’t tape it off. I’ve never done that before with my other vehicles because it was just so easy to go back with a rag and gasoline or brake cleaner and clean off the little bits where the overspray happened.
Well, this van is going to be probably 20 or 30 times more challenging, so if I want to get the paint off all the places it shouldn’t have gotten, it’s going to take hours and hours.
More bad decisions. More bad thinking.
And yes, I had a full and complete meltdown, All the way to the point of me hitting the ground on my knees and making those lovely animal noises.
I’m a miserable mess.
And the meltdowns don’t help at all. There is no cathartic release getting the emotions and pain out. Even in the middle of the meltdown, there’s that clarity of perfect logic that knows that the meltdown is ridiculous and solves nothing, But without any hope, it’s the only way That comes to express the sheer desperation. Desperation with no relief in sight.
I really am so so so tired of this stupid life.
It’s just a stupid van. Shouldn’t be that big of a deal. But it’s been a pretty big stress for so long, and to have it turn out like this? I’ve paid people to do it for me, and it never got done. I’ve worked on it myself over and over and over again. And now… after so many hours and hours and hours and hours and days and months of working on it…
😞
This van is the perfect example of why after running into challenge after challenge after challenge with a given project, I just shut down emotionally with it. It’s like a mild PTSD. To think about even working on it, raises the stress level. It becomes this huge thing that looms large and seems impossible.
And this is exactly the result that I fear. So much effort expended. So much money expended. Hundreds And hundreds of dollars to go with all that massive amount of wasted time, and what’s the result?
Trash. Absolute trash. The fulfillment of all the fears. The fulfillment of the PTSD that I finally overcame only to have it reinforced a hundred times over.
And It certainly doesn’t help be at a point in life where life itself seems basically meaningless to me… where I live without meaningful hope that life happiness is a possibility, where my expectation of the future is a continual increase in physical pain every year and just more of the same of everything else…
Why would I foresee that? Because that’s been the story every year for the last… many. Any hopes that come are crushed so forcefully that at this point in my life, I don’t dare hope anymore.
I don’t dare.
I don’t know if I could handle having my hope dashed even one more time.
I dread the future. I dread more of this. More pain. More loneliness. More hell.
If that weren’t enough, I realized today that I pretty much destroyed the $2,000 rubber tracks on my mini excavator when I carved out the ramp down to the creek by the deck for my family here.
The rubber is literally coming off in chunks. I didn’t realize how bad it was before. I wasn’t paying attention. That go go go thing.
I screw everything up. Everything I touch turns to crap.
I guess maybe it’s a fair balance. When I was younger, I succeeded at just about everything. I was smart in school. I was great at sports. Now I’m a moron who fails at just about everything and makes just about everything worse.
I used to believe that effort was what mattered. And if we’re talking about the quality of a person, then that’s still true, but you can’t ignore the fact that effort can’t cover up a shattered life.
Why does my back hurt so much?
Ugh.
I went up to Liz’s house to ask Mike about the chainsaw. I’d sold the smaller one, but he was interested in the larger one. I didn’t want to sell it out from under him if he actually did want it.
They had the missionaries over for an early dinner.
When I heard The missionaries start to read a verse in the scriptures, ugh… I cringe. Deep down, I know that I still mostly believe, but it’s just fiery, violent anger and PTSD right now with god.
So. Much. Rage.
I stayed to help Liz with some computer/Facebook account issues. When she tried to log into Facebook, she was getting a message saying that her account was going to be deactivated in 180 days for violations.
That seemed really weird to me, like some kind of a scam or virus or something, but it was indeed the proper website. But oddly, she didn’t get that message when logging in with her phone or even when using a different browser.
Which leads me back to scam or virus or phishing stuff of some kind… somehow. But if that’s what it is, it’s gotten so sophisticated that it’s actually using Facebook’s actual website itself somehow.
It was a head scratcher. And I never figured it out. My recommendation was to uninstall and reinstall the browser, as the other browser wasn’t giving that message. I could have done that myself, but she’s got a Mac, and no offense to Apple, but their ecosystem is an annoying pain in the butt that’s really not user friendly nor intuitive.
They do have their good features. Apple air tags are fantastic. I don’t think anybody else has made anything quite like that, and when iPods came out they were genius.
Otherwise, no thanks. 😅
I went back down to my little staging area. I started cleaning up. I did some Tax work and started working with my accountant to try and get things straightened out for 2023.
Almost done. Lots of records I need to get her.
My mom came over for something… I think just to say hi… She had been out with Austin and his kids bowling and taking them to dinner.
She helped me clean up a bit. I’ve made a mess once again, as I mentioned yesterday, and It’s supposed to rain over night, so I need to clean up anything that could get rained on.
I’m tired. Not enough hope to sustain the push.
~ stephen
Lift the World 