Do you believe a mechanical thing, a car or van, have special characteristics?

I didn’t use to. Now I’ve been the owner of this van for almost 13 months. And she’s got character (yes, she’s mostly a she, but every now and then she’s also a he and an it, it all depends). She’s been super reliable and trustworthy. Until we try to sell her. Maybe she’s feeling hurt because we’re abandoning her?!

Last month we had a potential buyer, we had a temporary fuse box problem. Then we had the break in with only 11 days left on our working holiday visa.. And today, driving towards Auckland to for sure sell her, the clutch breaks down. Well, technically we can still drive it, but it’s rather scary to have to start the van in a gear or reverse. It’s almost impossible to put in a gear from neutral while the van is running. It’s rather scary, so we decided to deal with it now, rather than risking it while driving to Auckland.

Now, this could just be described as bad luck, it’s an older car, so it’s bound to happen sooner or later. But why when we’re selling it?!

Characteristics or not, I have put down my foot and explained to her that she better start behaving now! Causing trouble for us won’t make us keeping her longer, this time it’s final, she’ll be sold.

We’ll see if my firm voice will stop our bad luck from following us. 😂

I’ll also add that I haven’t managed to keep up my end of the challenge, to post daily. A few (ok, quite many) late posts, plus 4 days of not posting I believe it ended up being. Way better than September through. So I think the conclusion is that I need some pressure, but definitely not too much.

And tomorrow awaits my novel writing month challenge! Plenty to write then! I’ll still pop in and write a bit here, but I’ll definitely keep it on the lower side compared to these two months.

-Petra