17 July 2016

The question that frees you isn't 'what should I do?', it's 'what should I stop?'

I miss the days when I had the time to enjoy this hobby - and I wish I'd truly appreciated it when they were my 'present'.  I don't think I understood just how good things were.

I couldn't understand how other people could be so short-sighted on these projects and wind up spending a ton of money only to lose most of it and sell it all off years later.  Now I'm one of those people and I understand.  The reality is that it sucks but to keep investing in something with no return is insane.  I try to stay on *this* side of ridiculous and, occasionally, it's a struggle.

A lot of time has been spent considering, pondering, wondering, planning alternatives and identifying what might be around the corner, downstream...but the simple fact is that the time may have come where I have to let this project go.  The odds of getting this project off the ground, literally, are slim to none.  I think that it's best that I just stop blowing money on something that has yet to materialize.  Far too much time and money has been spent to be at the place where I've paused.  And since this car is still in pieces, I'll get next to nothing for it when it's sold/parted - making the exit from this project that much more expensive.

Life gets complex when you get older, gain responsibilities and have to arrange what you want to do around and after what you have to do.  It's one of those things that some people can skirt by paying others to do for them while they work out their other commitments.  Most of those people wind up paying 3-4 times what they should and carry the debt around with them until they figure out how to pay it all back.  That's not for me - if I can't pay for it now, I don't buy it.  That's part of how I have reached this time and place.  I'm at a point where I'm either going to have to pay a lot to get this car done (over $10k) or just let it go and cut my losses - which are substantial, both in time and cost.  There's a reason there are no photos for 2 years on the progress of this car - nothing has happened.

There are, of course, other personal factors that I'm not going to get into here that also influence this decision but, ultimately, this is probably the time to make it happen.  I'm honestly in over my head with two cars at this stage in my life and to start - one of them is going away.  Should the slope get slippery, I'll sell the second car and all of the parts and exit the hobby permanently.

EDIT: I've got a potential buyer so the end may be near for this project.  Fortunately, he's very interested in the N model so it's likely that Ferris may see life after all.  A ray of light in a dark scene.

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