v. annoying day

I should preface this by saying that almost everything about the day was actually great, but it was overshadowed by one v. annoying thing -- I scraped up my car in Chandlord's (soon to be my) parking garage. I've never had an accident of any kind before (except the time that I put a pickup into the ditch, but it was snowing heavily, I'd only been driving three months, the truck didn't have automatic steering, and I didn't do any damage, so it doesn't really count). So this was quite a shock, and really upset me for most of the day. The damage is almost entirely superficial and will just require repainting to fix, so I suppose I should feel lucky -- although it's clear that if I had been just an inch farther away from the wall, nothing would have happened. It just sucks because I don't have the time or energy to deal with fixing my car on top of moving, unpacking, starting a new job, working on polishing and selling my book, and making adequate time for future writing/socializing/healthier living.

The funny (as in funny annoying, not funny ha-ha) thing is that when I met with my insurance agent on Tuesday, I raised my deductible to $1000 because I 'never get into accidents' and in general felt it was smarter to pay a lower premium under the assumption that over the course of my life it will even out with the higher deductible. Great move on my part, right?

As I was brooding over my car, though, I realized that there is probably a lesson here. The obvious one is that I shouldn't take corners too fast in unfamiliar garages, but we'll leave that one alone. The more subtle one is that my perfectionist tendencies are so strong that the knowledge that I had just messed up my car was enough to make me nauseous -- and considering that it's just a car and that I didn't damage anyone or anything else, my reaction is rather out of proportion to the actual consequences.

The problem is that I adore my car, and I have that uniquely American love for the automobile and the open road that pretty much guarantees that I will hold on to my car even as gas prices skyrocket and more fuel-efficient, less fun cars take over the roads. And I really do see my car as an extension of myself -- I've said before that I am enthralled by the idea of being a cyborg, and when I'm driving, I feel so 'at one' with the car that I tend to do some of my best thinking on the road. So the knowledge that I wasn't paying close enough attention to the physical space around me and scraped up the car as a result got an even more visceral reaction than, say, the moment I realized that the three-inch burn scar on my arm (received while baking cookies last Christmas) will never go away -- the scar on my arm may be a little unsightly, but it's nowhere near as bad as driving around in a scraped-up car that proclaims my 'inability' to drive.

That gets back to the perfectionist thing -- it doesn't really matter that I'm driving a scraped car, but at the same time I know that I profile people on the road based on the state of their bumpers, and am much more cautious toward people who have visible dents and dings. The idea that someone, somewhere, might think me incompetent at something actually upsets me to a degree which I am usually not comfortable admitting (even if it's probably obvious to those who have seen me in action). From there it's a swift downward spiral into feelings of guilt and remorse over the times that I've shoved people away because I didn't want them to get to know the messier sides of me, and on into the even worse feelings of sadness and regret over the handful of times that I've let people in and then not gotten from them the type of emotional response or relationship that I wanted.

Luckily I recognize where that spiral's headed, so I'm just going to stick to the top level of 'general car annoyance' rather than continuing down that path. And really, the rest of the day was lovely; I woke up at Vidya's around 7:30, which was far too early considering that we played Rock Band until 1am last night and then watched all of 'Batman Begins'. Chandlord and I went down the street for some coffee, loaded some stuff into my car, scraped it against the garage wall, and then went to San Jose to drop her stuff off at her parents' house. Her mom made lunch for us, and it was delicious; I hadn't had anything Indian in six months, and homemade Indian is pretty great even if it is vegetarian. Then we went back to the evil city and played some Rock Band before going out for Salvadorean food at a great restaurant near her (soon to be my) apartment. Now I'm back in Berkeley, figuring out what I need to take care of tomorrow, and planning on going to bed in the next twenty minutes -- I think an extensive period of sleep will help me to recover some of my equilibrium and get over the damage that I caused to my poor car. Goodnight!