What’s the longest amount of time you’ve driven around with the check-engine light glowing? A few days? Maybe a month or two? How about for over 20 years?
Exactly 30 years before this past Friday, this very associate editor entered the world–around 9 p.m., I’ve been told.
So yay, happy birthday to me.
I can only speak for myself, but …
I don’t recall the exact moment, but I finally decided that enough was enough. I was tired of feeling like I was surviving instead of thriving like so many other people around me seemed to be.
I think it's important to be conscious of the biases in the peeks we have into the lives of people around us. Those peeks are often filtered and curated portrayals that don't show downsides, negativity, or failures in other their lives that are all too obvious in our own. Personally, I find that the more I compare myself and my life to those of the people around me, the less content I feel while focusing on working on and improving the things important to me have the opposite effect.
I'm celebrating this article and what looks to me like the vulnerability and authenticity in it. 
In reply to CyberEric :
Yeah, Colin knocked it out of the park. As you noted, it’s very authentic.
Thank you for the kind words.
I think this really comes from a place where I want others having similar issues to understand that it's not that they are bad at life, it's likely that their brain is kind of working against them. The big takeaway, of course, being that it doesn't have to be like that forever.
I really didn't expect to be reading a mental health article with Grassroots Motorsports, but I'm glad you have shared this. My daughter has a similar diagnosis and I think honestly we all have our own special quirks. Thanks for taking the time to be vulnerable and share your story.
Colin,
thank you for this post. It has hit closer to home then I bet you ever imagined.
Colin,
thank you for this post. It has hit closer to home then I bet you ever imagined.
Thank you for sharing this, and congrats on your fantastic discoveries in self management!
I was, however, hoping a little bit to find some insights to the 7 different CEL vehicles sitting in my driveway! 😂
My youngest was a bit of emotional gong show. Got him checked out - ADHD and Autism.
Which inspired us to get eldest checked out (he seemed "normal," by my standards) - Austism.
Which checked a lot of boxes for me - Autism.
The next BIG thing for me was some heavy sessions of PTSD therapy. Turns out my childhood may not have actually been "healthy."
If you have a check-engine light on the dashboard of your brain, get it checked out.
Really appreciate you sharing this colin. Been dealing with similar stuff myself and finally got checked out last month. Still figuring things out but its already helping.
Having a check engine light that seems to constantly be on but on alternating brightness settings is something I have always struggled with but I have been slowly been working on fixing it completely over the past few years. And Colin you are so right, it doesn't mean there is something wrong with us, our ECU is just a little out of whack.
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