Car Crash

Great start to the year. I'm driving home from work yesterday and some moron decides he's turning right from the left hand lane on a dual carriageway, does a full 90 degree turn right across my lane and I end up t-boning him. The guy gives me some sob story about his situation and that he'll pay for the damage.

He was foreign, didn't speak good English and I get the feeling he's either uninsured, unlicensed or both. I really don't need this right now.

So I end up spending yesterday afternoon in this drawn out text message exchange, half of which doesn't make any sense. He wants to buy my car off me. Then he doesn't. He wants his friend to fix it. Then he's selling his car to pay for my repairs. It all sounds like bullshit.

Apparently I'm going to his shop on Monday to collect the cash for the repairs. I have a very bad feeling about this. I don't trust him or anything about the situation. My insurance company wasn't overly helpful. I reported it to them just so it is logged in case this goes sideways but all they wanted me to do was to pass it straight on to Enterprise Car Rental. Because apparently that's how car accidents work now. Insurance companies don't do anything, corporate car rental companies take the claims, presumably so they can rent a courtesy car to you, arrange the repairs and then recover it at an overblown rate from whoever's insurance company is deemed to be liable.

So why am I not just passing it on to them and let the corporations work it out? It was clearly the other driver who was at fault. His sudden move across my lane left me no chance to react. But if you have any experience of car accidents you'll know it immediately descends into bullshit. He said, she said. Everyone tells the story of what happened in the fashion that reflects best on them. And if you're someone with a lot to lose, as this guy sounds, then I'd expect outright lies.

Last time I was in an accident was as a passenger in an ex-girlfriend's car. Other car comes round a blind corner on the wrong side of the road and hits her car. Clearly in the wrong... you'd think. But by the time the reports are made a totally different accident is on paper. The other driver lied her way out of it and there was nothing anyone could do.

I could pretend I'm trying to help out a young guy that's going to bring a world of hassle down on himself. There is an element of that. But the reality is it is purely self-interest. I don't want to go down the insurance route unless I have to because I know what they are like and I know what third parties are like. Neither can be trusted.

If I'm being totally honest, if I had a dashcam there would be no issue. There would be clear evidence that would be difficult to argue with. I'd just pass it over to the insurance company and say deal with it. I'd feel sorry for the young guy who is either going to get hit with a massive insurance premium next year or find himself in a legal hole. But that's life. When I was his age I had an accident that was entirely my fault and I faced the same massive insurance premiums for a couple of years. That's part of life, it hurts but you live through it and you learn and maybe you take a bit more care.

What has really got to me is the affect it had on my mental state. All the administrative hassle has been hanging over me so there is that. But there is more to it than that. It has affected my self-esteem which was already feeling a bit low to begin with.

I was listening to a podcast where the guy in it said he was in a queue in the post office and could see the CCTV monitor. There was a guy in the queue who looked really shabby, like he had fallen on hard times and just given up. It made him sad and angry that people lived like that and allowed themselves to descend into that state.

Then he realised the guy on the monitor was him. The story niggled at me and I started feeling like I was in a similar position. I thought I was OK but when I look close it seems like my life has taken a shabby turn. I look down at heel. I've not gone anywhere for two years so not bothered buying many new clothes that weren't purely functional. And I've worn them to death. I feel scruffy. I feel poor.

There are other things, too. I live in a rented house. It's a nice house but there's been no maintenance done on it in the three years I've been there so it is starting to look a bit uncared for from the outside. I love the house but being the one scruffy house in a row of four that are well cared for is really hard to miss.

So now I'm feeling down at heel, I live in a house that looks uncared for and I'm driving round in a car that is beat up. I'm not one of these people who are incredibly precious about cars, always wash it on a Sunday types. But it's the most expensive object I own. I want it to look like I look after it. That I look after myself.

It's all made me feel very down at heel. And what's the solution? The easiest thing is to do what I despise: buy your way out of it. Buy a load of Primark clothes, buy something to tart up the outside, buy a repair to the car. Ultimately that's unsustainable, though. The time comes when you can't buy your way out of these assaults on your ego.

I'm working my way through a book called The Self-Esteem Workbook. I've done it before and found it helpful. Trouble is you need to remind yourself. Self-esteem is either something that is reflected back on you or something you can generate yourself in your own mind. Lockdowns have meant that I'm not going anywhere, not interacting with people so there is no boost coming from the way other people perceive you. And with being on my own for so long then I am left with generating it myself. I'm a catastrophiser so in this situation I naturally take the most negative view possible.

As trivial as it sounds, in this case driving round in a car with a dent in it means in my head I believe other people think I must be a piece of shit. If I'm getting out that car in shabby clothes then that confirms what I think they think. Obviously I have no evidence for this being true, it is entirely created inside my own head. The reality is that most people are too busy thinking about themselves to give me that much attention.

So that's it, that's where I am going into February. But there are some positives. My savings are still growing. Slowly, but growing. I've got a decent pot of money built up in my Topcashback account. I've done a bit of a financial review so have a much better idea of what my monthly budget is and it was a lot better than I thought. There are good things happening in amongst the bad.

I think my main focus needs to be getting more into other people's company. I thought I'm comfortable being on my own but equally a big part of that isn't that I enjoy it, it's that I'm able to cope with my own problems that way. That isn't living, I realise that. Nor do I want to get into the world of distraction that other people seem to live by: pubs, clubs, watching football, Netflix. So as the year progresses I need to give attention to expanding my horizons a bit more mindfully than I have been.