My obsession is with real cars, I like to buy them, buy parts for them, modify them etc but I do not earn enough money to do this. I have tried buying match box cars, model cars, Lego sets etc even though I like that stuff it doesn't hit the right spot. It causes me to be depressed and I'm not sure how to fix it.
I have, er - had, a very similar problem. A few years ago I confronted my issues and the behavioral consequences. Afterward, I noted some strange repercussions I have not shaken to this day.
This got dark quick, so I'm sorry. I'm posting it anyway.
Now, I grew up quite poor, which comes with two specific caveats that contributed to my issue: you have to learn to fix everything that breaks, and it is somewhat expected to have a lot of junk laying around. So, I learned from a very young age how to fix everything and make it last. When something was too expensive to fix or required a specific tool that was hard to get, it got put into the ever-growing pile of junk. Also, if you were simply working seventy plus hours per week to barely get by and too pooped to fix it, it may be placed on the junk pile too to wait for a better or more lucrative time to be fixed. Nothing was thrown away. I was never jobless for any period either.
So, junk piles up and you know how to fix it...if one could only find the time and the money to do it and do it right. Not to mention the perfectionism commonly grouped with ASD and, of course,
the poor understanding of motivations of social groups and their members. So I'd watch Overhaulin' and the like, and occasionally go to the street racer hangouts and parking lots and follow them to watch the races. Because, duh: all I could really do was watch. And plot.
And plot I did, with extreme and obsessive ASD superfocus. Working with what I had, I learned and researched, then designed on paper no less than ten entire vehicles. I spec'd everything based on the intended use of the vehicle, keeping projected costs down by doing factory upgrades and forum tricks, or simply fabricating a way to implement used parts like turbochargers and electronics. On countless pages of graph paper and giant stenos I engineered everything from a Ford powered dually AMC Eagle pickup (the Eagle-anche), to an LS swapped AWD six-speed Monte Carlo (with T-tops of course), including my opus: a twin-charged V6 Fiero with dual intercoolers, nitrous and methanol injection, radiused wheel wells filled with split-size wheels and custom fabricated suspension to manipulate launch weight transfer and tire slip-angles, all controlled with Megasquirt and a laptop fabricated into the dash (and other stuff I've forgotten).
At this point, I'm sure some readers will be thinking that I'm some kind of Fast and Furious poser - the kind of big-talker that would make a roll bar out of PVC pipe. Unfortunately for me, nothing could be further from accurate. Realize all of this took place over the course of about seventeen years, with projects requiring months of painstaking learning, trial and error, drawing and re-drawing until everything was right on paper. Throughout this process I bought countless books to aid and further my understanding - and not just those magazine-ish books, I mean academic books of the internal combustion engine, fluid dynamics and vehicle dynamics. Fascinating stuff - because when I couldn't afford a thousand dollars for a part, I could swing one hundred for an academic text.
But, this tendency to distract myself from the lack of IRL progress with elaborate theory was chronic. And destructive. I used to wallpaper my work areas with project schematics, formulas and specs for quick reference, and hand rendered drawings of finished products. But, I misunderstood those pesky group motivations. I thought people were addicted to their cars as art and expression of the human spirit and capability, and set out to express my self. I thought this was how social groups worked. I hadn't yet realized that these guys I saw at the street races and on TV were doing the bare minimum to acquire social dominance and get laid. I really believed it meant something deep.
As time went on, I noticed my jumping from project to project with no progress. I noticed all the rust forming on the cars. I saw what the weather did to paint and interiors. Every time I had enough money to buy something significant, it was stolen by some other necessity. Every time there was the hope of progress, something would give way. I watched my dreams and self expression rot before my waking eyes.
Inevitably, I had to come to terms with the fact that I would never have the economic capability to do anything with my projects. And, if I did get money, it would be too late for the rusted corpses of these cars I thought of as friends. In the end I sold three cars, scrapped nineteen cars, scrapped eight tons of metals and took over three tons of other crap to the dump. I watched them all be forked off a trailer into the hands of monsters that didn't care about them like I did. I cried like a little bicth right in front of the scrapyard guys. I made myself watch cars be processed and shredded to bits, so I would know what my failure really meant to these things - these friends I had sworn to protect and restore.
I ripped down and burned all my drawings, graphs, many books and reference manuals. It was quite ritualistic, but failed to make me experience any real relief. This was all over three years ago now.
In the years since, I have become stoic and detached from any work I do. Where I used to find great pleasure in the necessary and boring things, now I find annoyance and depression. Fantastically, this is where I found financial success - doing something strictly for money is where I finally found money. And now that I have disposable income, I stay as far away from cars - or anything I used to love - as is humanly possible. I'll die before I go through that again. Although I cannot say I regret getting rid of so much stuff, I am very regretful of the hasty
rip off the bandaid way I did it. This way caused much waste and residual regret.
Using that same ASD superfocus, I dove into advertising and studying group psychology (and how I was duped into thinking car culture was something it really isn't). Now I make money selling people the lies they need to live. Interestingly, people buy lies almost impulsively, but when I want to talk shop about group psychology I get accused of lying. Unbelievable, really.
So, the moral of the story is: there isn't one. Happiness in the Western world is only for wealthy children and people too abused to dare look for hope. You may find some success in selling car parts on ebay - like going to the junkyard and buying a taillight for fifteen bucks and selling it online for eighty. But competition is fierce and it takes seed capital, if not tools and gas money. Just don't get too emotionally involved and don't place any of your personal value on the outcome of anything.
