Lively Lately #80: not the Jane you know

I sold my PT Cruiser.

A 20-year-old car is expensive. Parts are hard to find, and not all mechanics are willing to take it seriously.

Every time my life started going well, this damn car needed something else.

And I wanted a new car. Literally wanted to throw the whole thing away.

That hippo of a car caused me so much distress when it constantly needed work.

My car was prioritized over my health, and look where THAT got me…

I spent an entire day weighing the $8k+ worth of repairs versus selling it to a junkyard and Ubering where I need to go.

Ubers are expensive, but not $8k+ worth of expensive quickly compiling and demanding to be paid immediately.

The day I accepted an offer from The Clunker Junker, they sent a tow truck driver to pick it up — and I was paid the full $385 in cash!

I felt relieved, but also weird. For the longest time, driving a PT Cruiser had become part of my personality.

I’m way past that now, but selling my junky car I couldn’t drive felt like giving up a chunk of my independence.

I paid $325 in rent this two weeks, my housemate Zelled me the remaining $60, I bought groceries…my shorter paycheck due to cut hours no longer put me in such a pinch.

I bought a new laptop!

Windows 10 is no longer supported, and this laptop has been buggy and unable to keep up with what I needed it to do.

I was so distraught in November over that damn car because I’d been saving and planning to buy a new laptop. I worked overtime to buy a new laptop!

Selling my car for junk relieved me a bit, increasing my income for my first December 2025 paycheck.

I came home from the ER the day I got paid and bought a laptop on sale for $292 so I could blog more/better and create workshops.

Like, working full-time in retail is no longer a viable option for me long-term since my body is the tool.

Blogging is now about my survival. I’ve a lifelong monotropic specialization in this shit, my skill temporarily masked by injury and burnout but never stopped compounding.

Perhaps this is why it’s going so well for me despite all I’ve been criticized for.

Chronic pain flare-up

I’m having a flare-up and went to the ER because I was so desperate for relief.

It was the worst experience of my life to the point that I will be writing about it the same way Taylor Swift would write songs about it, but with stats.

I got home and realized I had a bloody nose, wondered how long I’d had one, considered how much of a red flag it was and figured it wouldn’t matter to any doctor I could see immediately since I was sent home barely able to walk.

This experience taught me how much I mask not just my neurodivergent brain, but also my pain and physicals struggles — especially in environments where I don’t feel safe to need help.

Which is bloody ironic because the environment where feeling safe should exist is in a building surrounded by doctors.

I saw myself in the mirror and did not look like the masked version Jane anyone else knows…and thought, “Maybe it’s time they start getting to know her.”