The incident that nearly broke me
I want to tell you about the cooling fluid incident that nearly broke me.
I have been overwhelmed lately. As you may know, I am in a phase of experimentation in my art. That is sometimes fun, and oftentimes frustrating. I create a lot, and most of it is just ugly. I try to remind myself this is exactly what is supposed to happen, but it’s not easy.
It’s also winter. Not my favorite season. Netflix and fleece blankets are fun for a couple of months, but by now I’m really ready for some blossoms and blue skies.
My to do list only seems to grow instead of getting shorter, and in December my car indicated I needed to fill up the cooling fluid. I’m new at owning a car, so I asked around where to buy cooling fluid, and googled which was the right container. My car is old, and Google wasn’t really clear on where to put the fluid. It did say I had to buy the same color fluid as it already had, and since there was only one container I could see through and that one contained some blue-greenish fluid, I bought turquoise cooling fluid, poured it in there and checked that off my list.
I was so proud of myself… I even told a friend I was practically a mechanic.
My car didn’t agree though. It still indicated it needed more cooling fluid. Oopsie.
Normal people would probably just open up the car hood again, and figure it out. My style is more… panic, then procrastinate for a couple of weeks. (I’ve always been better at ‘freeze’ than at ‘fight’ or ‘flight’.)
Asking for help is still a little difficult for me, so I called my brother for advice, but didn’t allow him to come help me. The conclusion was that I had poured the cooling fluid in the windshield wiper fluid container. At least I had some clarity on the issue. But instead of one item on my to do list (fill cooling fluid), I now had 8: buy pump, pump the cooling fluid out of the windshield fluid container, buy windshield fluid, fill up windshield fluid, find the real cooling fluid container, see what color the fluid is, buy the right color cooling fluid, fill up the cooling fluid container. And hope for the best…
I was on my way to the car stuff store, when I drove by one of my elderly neighbors. It was 10am on a cold day, and she was removing the moss off the sidewalk in front of her house. And then I lost it. I just couldn’t stop crying. Here I was, in dirty clothes, without having brushed my teeth, driving a car that might explode because I’m not capable of taking care of it, planning to have pancakes for dinner because no energy for cooking, completely failing at adulthood, crying. And there she stood, cheerfully waving at me, doing something I have never even thought of doing. Conclusion: I’m a failure.
Many tears and even more M&M’s later, my car is okay, and so am I.
I’m right where I need to be in my creation process (in the messy middle), and I put my to do list out of sight. Several exciting art opportunities are in the pipeline, and my tulips are coming up.