I'm guessing you had a bad day working on something and your venting. I get it, if I get 5% of what I think I planned to get done it was a good day. I can no longer plan what I'm going to each day. Now I just go until I breakdown. Usually about two-hours of easy work and I'm broken. I'm in too much pain to continue. The pain sucks the life out of me. Meds don't work, the best thing is to try and sleep to escape from the pain. Even when I'm working on cars in my dreams I'm in pain in my dreams. My whole life revolves around working on projects, which is why my body is shot at only 58 year's old. Between work and home I literally wore it out, used of the cartilage and vertebrate discs. If this was a 1000 year's ago natural selection would have had a wild animal kill me before I had gotten into this bad of shape. The worse part is knowing its going get worse with time.
I cannot keep up anymore with what I have spent my entire life accumulating. I won't pay anybody, not because I'm cheap but because I want to do it myself. I don't want a car somebody else built for me. Why would I want a car somebody else built?
I had another interest, I "had" a vision of retiring and fishing off the rocks at the SoCal beaches and then they went and turned it all into a marine preserve. The places I fished as a kid. There went that dream. I don't know what's worse, getting old or living in CA?
I can't bend-over because it hurts too bad. I can't see unless I take a picture of something and enlarge it. My brain wants go work on stuff and my body just flips me off and refuses to cooperate. I'm only 58. two back surgeries, three shoulder surgeries and a failed cornea transplant. Now I'm living on pain pills and they only get rid of 20% of the pain.
I use to maintain 100% of everything, on 157 phone company vehicles by myself. All the repairs, services, Bit inspections, aerial boom inspections, tires, smog inspection, all of it done in-house by me. Now I don't feel like working on just one of my 15 Ford projects. I spent the morning at the neurologist for back and leg pain. I either sell all this crap that took my whole life to acquire. I should sell the cars but then its all over. Everything I worked for so I could retire and restore cars. I brake lathes, hydraulic press ignition scope. hoist , rotisseries, distributor machine, gas, mig and tig welders. A paint booth. A 2500 sf garage. I have more equipment than 90% of the auto repair shops and probably ten-times the knowledge. I let my smog license expire, I let my 17 ASE certifications expire. I let my Class A truck driver's license with a hazmat endorsement expire. I use to help write the CA State Smog License questions for licensing technicians. I let that go. I can't do any of that stuff for a living anymore but I did not expect to get to the point I didn't want to work on my own stuff anymore. The pain has just worn me down. I just don't get up out of a chair, I have to think about a minute because its gonna hurt big-time.
If any you guy's are young and you think you want to be a mechanic for a living you better think twice. Go get a Mechanical Engineering degree. Be the guy that designs the cars not the poor guy that works on them. All of the Verizon mechanics are breaking down in their 50s. Three-quarters of them have had shoulder surgeries or shoulder replacements. Then there is that exposure to chemicals. I'm having some neurological issues. I just have to wonder about all those gasoline baths I've taken, year's of absorbing carb cleaner and antifreeze did not damage my nervous system. Not to mention the asbestos I use to blow it out of my nose from doing clutch and brake jobs. I keep waiting for one of those asbestos seeds to spout.
Cars are a terrible hobby and an even worse career choice. But the brain wants what the brain wants. For some people its cigarettes, alcohol and heroin and for others its Mustang fastbacks, 4-speeds, shaker hoods. As hard as it is for me to drag my butt out to work on my projects I'm no going to let this old body stop the 18 year-old kid that lives in my head!
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