WHINGE

I'm grumpy and depressed this weekend, and complaining to the 
internet is less destructive than annoying some real-life human. 
Plus I can't see when you stop listening. So here we go...

I caved in and took the Jag into the mechanics a couple of weeks 
ago. Some noises from the suspension and drivetrain have defeated 
my feable methods of diagnosing problems that only happen over 
certain bumps or at speed. The appointment was about a month after 
I booked it in, and they only wrote down for me the date. Good old 
litteral-thinking me assumed that meant any time that day was fine. 
Wrong, apparantly I missed my 8AM appointment, and as a result two 
weeks later they've finally got around to _looking_ at it after 
it's been sitting there all that time.

They found all the shock absorbers are leaking, which pisses me off 
because the rear ones were replaced by them 50,000Km ago. I'll 
query them about the quality of the ones they use this time, 
although they're already saying that the car isn't worth the cost 
of doing the replacement (which I'll ignore of course - that ship 
sailed soon after I bought it), so it'll probably make me feel like 
an idiot. I'd like to do it myself but I don't even know where to 
get the right tools for compressing the springs safely, let alone 
use them.

They've also blamed my other complaint, noise from the back when 
going over ~50km/h, on the left rear wheel bearing. I replaced both 
of the rear wheel bearings and observed no change at all, so that 
only makes sense if I've somehow stuffed it up exactly the same way 
it was when I started. My suspicion was the diff, which they've 
also worked on before. Anyway I'll have to let them go through and 
change the wheel bearing again on the assumption that I stuffed it 
up, but I hope I don't get it back with the same problem still 
there and have to go through the whole process of booking it in 
again.

The worst thing is that usually when I've got something like this 
playing on my mind which I can't quite shake, I get away from it by 
going for a drive somewhere in the Jag! Instead I've got my father's
ute, lately adorned with a ~1/3rd of a ton of crushed rock because
he still needs it for his own use. I feel bad about borrowing it 
for an extra two weeks just because I stuffed up my appointment too.

It's not putting me off the Jag, but I am thinking again about 
buying a second vehicle. But then I'd like a 4x4 so it's better 
suited to the decrepit conditions of the gravel roads in winter, 
and decent 4x4s are worth a lot, especially lately with 
recent-model used Land Cruisers now advertised around the $100,000 
mark. I could get a bottom-dollar one from around $6,000 (still 
more than double what I paid for the Jag), but then I'll be looking 
at stuff that doesn't have a roadworthy certificate (required for 
transfer of vehicle registration) and the mechanics will probably 
give me the "I don't think it's worth it" lecture on that too. Plus 
it's another car needing routine maintenance, rego, and insurance - 
easily $1,000 per year.

Fact is, the idea was that I'd have found a more steady way of 
making money from my business by now. I have got money to pay for 
whatever the Jag needs doing to it now regardless of how it pans 
out, but will I make that money back? Hard to tell. It's also on 
top of some recent dental expenses that added up fast (funny how 
the public healthcare system doesn't cover dental work, as if poor 
people can live without teeth, well I guess some do...). So far I 
have been slowly saving money simply by not spending much on things 
other than the Jag (and not having quite as many business failures 
as usual). The cost of a second vehicle might end that, but so 
might more medical expenses. Heaven forebid major structural work 
on the house! Then should I give up and get a real job in some 
dead-end unqualified field of work? At what point would I make that 
call? What are my chances with zero qualifications and references 
anyway?

So as you can see I'm getting into a spiral of uncertainty, the end 
of which is probably pure existential dread. Aside from the issue 
of spending of even more $$$, this would be a great time for that 
rail holiday I didn't go on earlier. But the local train line is 
closed again again at the moment (has it always been this bad?), 
and next week school holidays start and there'll be lots of 
horrible children everywhere, probably including on the train. I 
can't stand them at the best of times. But maybe I could go after 
that, if the lines are open, which I can't tell because as I know 
from last time they don't figure out what lines are running until 
about a week in advance, maybe.

In the mean time I might as well double down on misery and do my 
tax return. That always sets me into this same mind of uncertainty 
and self doubt anyway, but at least with detours into maths, legal 
guesswork, and repetitive data entry.

 - The Free Thinker