Last Thursday I ordered a $400 car cover so my 2022 Shelby GT500 could sit in the driveway for six months while I'm gone.
That same afternoon the engine blew.
Loud noise from underneath, oil light, then the battery died while I sat on the side of the road for two hours waiting for a tow truck that showed up without the right equipment. The second tow truck wasn't much better. The car cover got to the house before the car did.
Wednesday, Ford called with the diagnosis. Three cylinders low on compression, metal in the oil, scoring on the cylinder walls. I don't even know what any of that nerd shit means, but what I do know is that it's $45,000 to fix. On a car with 15,000 miles on it. I still owe $57,000. And the pulley and tune I put on it last year voided the warranty, so there's nobody to fight. I did the normal thing guys do to these cars and got the unlucky version of the outcome.
If you missed last week's email, here's the context. In a week or two I'm leaving the country for six months to travel the world. One backpack, Portugal first, no fixed plan after that. The whole point of the trip was to slow down, reset, and leave with nothing hanging over me.
So for a few hours on Wednesday I was pissed. $45,000 is still a whole lot of money to me, so the money was part of it. But mostly it was the timing. I was supposed to be leaving with no stress and no loose ends, and now I've got a dead car and a loan to deal with in the two weeks before I go.
Then I processed it. And then I fully accepted it. By the next afternoon I could laugh about it.
Here's the thing I keep relearning. There is big power in surrendering to what you can't control. If there's no immediate action you can take to change the outcome, replaying it in your head does nothing except make you anxious, distracted, and miserable. The engine is blown whether I think about it or not. The only thing I get to choose is whether I spend my days thinking about it.
I'm still leaving. The decision on the car gets made before I go. The repair doesn't need me here. That's the whole update.
— Noah Danenhower
P.S. What's the thing you can't control that's still living in your head? Reply with one sentence. I'm just curious.