Tonics and Potions and Tinctures

Originally Posted Thursday, October 3, 2013

I got my car back from the repair shop yesterday.  $500 deductible and $350 for a rental for ten days.  Out of pocket.  I could have done better things with the money, but everybody wants it.  It is difficult to hold onto. 

Now I am facing a dilemma.  Should I trade my car for a new one?  I've never done that before.  I can buy the last of the 2013s at a lower price and have a car that I won't have to pay any repairs on for three years.  If I keep mine, repair bills are sure to add up.  I need four new tires and will need breaks soon.  I love the car and don't want debt, but either way, I am going to pay out money over the next few years.  I'm leaning toward the new car.  Maybe I'll trade every two or three years.  That's what old men do, right? 

It is a thing that visits me at 3 a.m. 

I've also realized that I might never have my house paid off.  Not in ten years, anyway.  Why am I just now thinking about that?  These things occur to me now in my sleep.  And other lifetime horrors as well.  It is probably common for some my age, but you would think that such things would have been planned for earlier in life. 

I have not been much of a planner.  I've never really liked the type.  They were smart, of course, but they were careful and I didn't want to be that.  Some were not so careful but were lucky.  They hit it big one way or another.  Some planned and were unlucky and somehow lost it all.  I knew there were the two sides of it and thought I might leave it to luck.  I have.  Such is luck. 

Now trust me, I am no worse off than I was a year ago.  It is not that.  Everything's the same.  So what's changed? 

I think it was the car accident.  Suddenly I'm driving like an old man afraid to change lanes, struck with sudden arthritis, seized by panic.  "I can't have another accident," I think.  The sciatica has moved into my psyche.  I have developed a sciatica of the soul.

It is a mental disease, this projecting the future, imagining the worst.  I must discipline myself.  And I will.  Just as soon as I get some time. 

But now there is so much to be done, so much to be taken care of.  Chaos seems to occur at a quickened pace.  All I do is clean up messes it seems.  Endlessly. 

I must find a tonic that restores the cavalier and carefree in me.  Maybe there's a potion or tincture.  I'll search the internet to see.