Dear Good Hours.
I know it’s been a minute. Like six weeks or so worth of minutes. No excuses, just apologies. There has been a lot of car and plumbing repair work in my life lately. Not things I necessarily consider good hours, so writing about them is tough.
But today I had an experience I finally thought, “this is something I can write about at least.”
Yesterday I had the day off from the OR yesterday, a three day weekend, my wife and I took off to run errands, check my mom’s car for issues and do a bunch of grocery shopping. We stopped at a local farm supply / home store to look for a bolt I need to make a tool with. (Likely more on that later.) When we got back in the car it made 2 attempts to start and quit cold. No start anymore.
Fuck.
Long story and a tow later, the car… our only running car at the moment, needed what I suspected was a new starter. I called the part store closest to the house, 0.7 miles, and they said they could get the part from another area store the next morning.
Today started ok. Slept in a second. Breakfast. Call from the auto part store they’d received the part. Naomi and I put the harness and leash on the husky took off to walk. Louis, the husky chaos in our lives, pretty near pulled me all the way to the store and back. Holy crap is he a powerhouse of energy - although…. as I’m writing this he’s pretty near dead on the living room floor
Maybe we did wear him out….
I brought a bag to carry the rebuilt starter back home, and once we were here I got to work. The whole job went well, only took a couple hours. I was done in time for lunch, and thank whomever I was right in my diagnosis. The car runs again, less than 24 hours later.
This isn’t the first time I’ve replaced the starter on this car. The last time was May 21st 2019, (thanks to my obsessive photo taking in those days, I’m much to bad about remembering now.) The whole thing really struck me as I pulled the dead starter out and laid it next to the new (rebuilt) one.
1,747 days.
That’s the difference between these two starters.
I feel every bit of tarnish, every layer of oxidation, every millimeter of dirt and grime. The label, burnt indistinguishable, the “Carquest” logo only recognizable in contrast to it’s replacement.
I feel every bit of this.
Late winter - early spring 2019, I was in some kind of control. I’d all but abandoned my blog at oldwolfworkshop.com, because it just wasn’t…. Well I don’t have a word. I just felt done with it, as sad as it is to say that.
Still, I was interested in working. I was interested in documenting every day I spent toiling away at whatever I had in-front of me. (Most of it on Instagram.) as I found this pic from 2019 on my phone, showing me pointing out the starter replaced before this one.
Tbe trouble is, not long after I took the picture above, my life changed. I was changing the starter and the alternator, everything went well, I was congratulating myself on my proficiency and problem-solving abilities….
and then I went to put the serpentine belt back in place…. and the distal biceps tendon tore at the elbow on my left arm. Just like that I was out of work, at the hospital and at home, for four months.
I stayed busy, I had my kids help me rearrange the shop. I knolled and sorted my massive mess of drill bits into organized bins.
I even spent the time writing, drawing, inking, and coloring a comic book. The thing is complete, I just don’t know what to do with it so it lives in a drawer and in the cloud. I just wouldn’t let my momentum die.
Getting back into the shop once I was released from the brace and the restrictions was daunting, but I worked to pick up where I left off, it wasn’t my dominant arm, the loss of strength was recoverable.
Then almost exactly two years later, a heavy panel fell in the shop and of course I tried to catch it with one arm, and that’s how I tore the distal biceps in my right arm. My dominant arm.
Since that one, almost three years ago, getting momentum back has been a struggle. Don’t get me wrong, I feel like I’m doing something all the time, I just don’t feel like I’m accomplishing much. I’ve been reading more, and writing more, but I can’t seem to gain traction on a physical project. I spend all that energy fixing things that are breaking.
Sometimes, even thinking about going into the shop gives me a wave of anxiety. Not because I think I’ll get hurt again, but because I’m worried I’ll never finish the things I’m working on. And I know the regret of pushing a piece in desperation and turning out disappointed, because I hurried and missed a step, detail, or feature that was in the original plan.
It’s like taking your eyes off the road and ending up in the ditch. Hopefully everything is ok, but the embarrassment, even if no one else knows, is killer.
*****
Is there a cure for feeling tarnished. I think probably not. There is no man sized tub of Evapo-Rust that will help, and the truth is I have little complaint in the rest of my life. Marriage, day job, friends and semi regular social things, all on track.
I think this is just the kind of thing you have to keep walking through to see the other side of it. That’s my plan. Keep on stepping.
Love Derek
Ratione et Passionis