[1148] Bad Kitty

I feel like a fool. I crashed my car into my dad’s car as I was following him to go bowling. There’s enough context for it to be swirling around my head in need of a digression, because I’m finding myself stuck ruminating.

First, the day before, I mentioned to a friend that I’ve only hit 2 things in 20 years that were ruled my fault, and they were barely fender-benders in stop-and-go traffic. I’ve hit deer a few times, but that’s sometimes impossible to avoid. When I was 15 I fell asleep driving and swerved into the median on the highway, lucky to wake up/get woken up quick enough to brake without incident. I got into an accident in the country on a curve where it was a touch rainy and people tend to drive down the middle of the road. It’s not a perfect driving record, but I feel typical or passable for 20 years.

I mentioned this to her because we had encountered 5 different questionable issues within a few minutes in trying to escape a cramped parking spot, alley, and eventually make our way onto the highway in Chicago. Something was in the air, people were driving poorly on top of it, but we made it back without issue. 

I had also been talking about how much I appreciated my car. It’s been fuel efficient. It’s gotten me to almost 300 locations all over the midwest safely in the last 3 years. It’s uncomfortable and guzzles oil, but it’s worked, was $1,000, and did what I needed it to do. I knocked on floor trim, again, the day before, that nothing would happen to my car in spite of some disparaging remarks I made about being ill-fitting as a 6’2“ person in its roof-grazing cabin.

Fuck me, right?

It doesn’t present in an ”obvious“ way, but there are days where enough shifts happen in my expectations that I exist in a form of disorientation. My plan for today was to do concrete work. I woke up getting into the mindset of dealing with the heat, wrapping up with enough time to get food, go bowl, and then get back home. As I set off to do that, it gets cancelled, we decided to jump straight into food, beers, and bowling. 2 beers, not 3 or 20, not without food, and not without being 225 pounds.

The spot my dad and I ate was in the same parking lot of a new bowling alley he wished to check out. One so hoity-toity, they think reasonable people pay $50 an hour for a lane to bowl. I literally said, ”Fuck that,“ and we walked back to our cars, the plan for me to follow my dad to a familiar alley 15 minutes away. Another, small, but large enough factor that contributes to my sense of being disoriented, is switching from the kind of driving I do around where I live in the country, and on highways, to the stop-and-go (my old nemesis) of lights and neighborhoods and suburbia. It’s what I trained on, zooming around in my Mini Cooper as a teenager, but I pretty rarely come back to the area, where my fairly loose but still country-functional breaks, don’t register so blatantly insufficient.

Ok, I’m not working today. We’re loosey-goosey, on our way to bowl, full, edge-removed, and the future is bright. What’s that? A home being rennovated? I should turn my full attention to that and linger staring at the scaffolding setup while I belt out Senses Fail. Genius. I turn back, slam my inadequate breaks, and hit my dad’s car. He lightly bumps the car ahead of him who is happy to leave us after ensuring we’re okay upon getting pulled over. Thankfully, I didn’t fuck up his car, and my dad is chill, so there wasn’t some extra international incident on top of things. In spite of what looks like a large crunch, shattered light, and all of the anti-freeze gone, we hobble the thing back to my dad’s house after a few over-heated pass-out stops along the way.

The even broader context is that I feel like I’ve been particularly lost and flailing for direction or purpose for the last several months. I’m only up here to do more indulgent concert-going and organizing how I might put myself in work service to my friend and family. I’m in the wake of job prospects that fell through for ranging from laughable to straight insulting reasons. I’m the closest I’ve ever come to not being able to comfortably pay a credit card bill on time. I’m over-thinking every nice gesture sent my way because I don’t want to smell of desperate leech or entitled cunt piggy-backing off of people who are more responsible or put together than I can seem to figure out.

This feeling came to a head as we were being driven to the Incubus concert and I learned of a service where you can become a pet-sitter/home watcher. My friend chimed in that it could be a way I meet my baseline financial goals with the added bonus of getting to play with pets. My heart kind of sank. She was absolutely correct and meant nothing by what she said. It would be a cool little gig and I do love animals. Also, I’m a college graduate with years of experience across high-stress and emotionally sensitive disciplines. I’ve physically built parts of my own house. I’ve spent months or years learning every intimate detail of topics that I’ve found interesting, and I’ve invested thousands to try to take my demonstrated capacity to sustainable ownership and growing levels. Jay-Z doesn’t care about where you’ve been, only where you’re going.

It would be incorrect and imprecise to say that I’ve lost ”confidence“ in myself. I am still perfectly capable of doing and exercising the things I’m good at in a moment’s notice, and work to show that with each chance. My incredibly helpful and sympathetic friend was like, ”Hey, build me a shoe rack!“ Could she buy a shoe rack? Absolutely. And that’s just one of the projects and ways in which she’s been tears-inducingly helping me not feel like a hopeless alien. My dad, ever the mench, buys the meals and games when we hang and uses every waking hour to demonstrate his service to his family and obligations.

Statistically, we’re crashing cars in big and small ways all the time. It’s a thing you’re extremely likely to do at least a handful of times throughout your entire life. I have clients who have expasperatingly explained the 7 to 12 cars they’ve totaled during the heights of their years using drugs. After heart disease and strokes, driving is one of the deadliest things we do, and most are just happy no one was hurt, and there’s still room on the credit card.

But here I linger. I’m not on some wild coaster of emotion. I’m not ironically trying to kick myself when I’m down. I’m not without a plan or resources. But it feels like one of those times where ”the universe“ has sent a particularly jarring metaphor for my overall sense of being in the world. My other friend has done dozens of hours of free mechanical work on the car for the last few years after I bought it off him. And here I go and run it into my dad? Is that who am I right now? Is that indicative of what I’m ”really“ doing with my life?

As soon as I signed into Instagram, a Definitely Maybe song they’ve been pushing a lot over the last few months starts playing. ”I crashed my car this morning….“ Cool. I continue to scroll and Scott Galloway starts up, ”It’s not about life happening to you, it’s how you respond to it.“ Here here, Scott! And the story I’ve been telling myself over the last 3 years is that, if I can’t seem to establish this ”floor“ of stable income that doesn’t require my entire life of time, I’m going to at least pack into it as much indulgence and culture as I can barely afford, and trade fast-food meals for bags of concrete and wood to slowly build out more on my land.

That’s all well and good! Nearly everyone tells me. They’re envious! Whether they’re choosing to ignore and refusing to like anything I share regarding my endeavors. Again, I’m met with the prospect of what I’m being told, verses how it manifests, or doesn’t, in practical terms. I don’t think the grass is greener at a 9-to-5, or at sub $20 an hour, or in any environment that requires the kinds of sacrifices that strip you of your humanity. I hear it from the horses’ mouthes, across industries, constantly, and haven’t forgotten my time across…20? different jobs since the age of 15.

Well, then I fuck up and engage with personalities or read about someone doing something approximating my interests. So just do that! Make investigative journalism videos like Johnny Harris! Or, why don’t you put together tutorials cutting out all of the ”Heeeey guys“ and annoying backstory from the DIY videos you’ve been watching to do more handyman stuff? I know! Everyone can get sponsored by Better Help eventually! I mock myself, envying exceptions to rules and knowing I don’t have the attention span or interest to emulate, or I would have already.

I understand when my clients want to punish themselves. I’ve been talking about how I’m of two minds. I’m perfectly capable of choosing to be like a cat who just fell off something or spazzed-out and then 2 seconds later carries on like nothing happened. I’m not replaying the crash in my head thinking I’m going to turn back time. I don’t claim there’s some absent-of-my-insisting deeper meaning to extract as through your god again picked the worst way to relate to me. I’m just someone who doesn’t ”let things go,“ and don’t even really know what that means. I have to incorporate, not pretend to forget, or downplay, or ignore. My cats, all cats, are stupid cats.

Anyway, tomorrow, since I’m marooned anyway, I’m going to work on a concrete project for my dad. I’m going to look for a new old car. I’m going to try incredibly hard not to cuss and panic about how and when I might have to drive my truck an hour or 6. I’m going to wait out feeling gun-shy and yips that come along with thinking I’m just going to hit something again, because, of course I will.* And I’ve got to mourn this car that has been such a wonderful and persistent answer to so many problems that come with owning cars, which I fucking broke.

Oh, one more piece of conversational context. My friend and I were talking about how bizarre and unhinged members of her family have become around the subject of death. A grief counselor once explained that it’s normal to pretty aggressively grieve for a month after someone dies, but any further and they probably need therapy for deeper issues. I said that the denial of death is one of the biggest weird psychological holes that American’s can’t seem to get a handle on. We’re incredibly fragile and all suffering the precariousness of life. You either figure that shit out, or you make your insecurity and resentment towards the facts everyone else’s problem. Obviously, I was just really trying to sell my point by crashing, writing, and moving on. You get it.