There's a concept called Learned Helplessness, a feeling of lack of control over one's circumstances, which can lead to listlessness and depression. That's a small snapshot of one element of a broader area of research, but it's relevant today in a dramatic way, as many of us shelter at home to try and slow the spread of an as-yet unpreventable and incurable (though generally survivable) disease that is sweeping across the globe.
Learned Helplessness is thought to be especially prominent in people with generally pessimistic worldviews, a category of the population that I probably could be said to belong to. When all this [gestures at everything] winds down, I may even seek out some cognitive behavioral therapy to see about shifting my perspective.
One simple thing though that people can do to counter the impulses of helplessness, stress, and apathy brought on by the current state of our world and lives, is to make or change something. It's a small way of telling our brains "look, I have some power over the world, regardless of how things might feel."
The explosion of people baking bread right now is one good example of that behavior pattern.
Which brings us neatly to today's photograph. What you're looking at is the carburetor of Sadi, our 1950 Pontiac Chieftain. If the engine is the heart of a car, the carburetor is the lungs of a pre-fuel-injection-era gasoline-powered vehicle. The carb mixes fuel and air into an explosive mixture that is drawn through the intake manifold into the combustion chamber of each cylinder during its intake cycle, that mixture is then detonated to turn the piston, and by extension, power the car.
This particular carburetor has been something of a headache for the two years we've owned Sadi, prone, among other things, to leaking gasoline. Engine compartments are full of hot things, the exhaust manifold for instance, runs right behind the carburetor in a 1950 GM L6 engine. Uncontained gasoline + hot engine components is a good way to end up with Pontiac flambe. An ignoble end for a car that has survived for seventy years, and one we continue to try and avoid.
Saturday, I decided to go out and do some work on the car. I'm in the midst of re-wiring parts of the electrical system, and there is plenty of springtime maintenance needed after sitting for the winter. But once again, the damn carb started tinkling out gasoline at a steady rate, and I was determined to put a stop to it for good this time.
First on my own, then with Owen's help, I traced the leak, determined the cause (the bowl was overfilling), and made the necessary adjustments, namely bending the tabs on the float to reduce its travel. We then ran the car for a considerable amount of time without any leakage.
As victories go, it's a minuscule one. We've got two quite nice electric cars that we drive nearly all the time, and we're not driving anywhere right now regardless.
But I felt like I'd hung the moon anyway. For the first time in over a month, something had changed because I had made it different, had made it better. It sounds silly to say that an old car I'm not driving right now anyway, running a bit better than it was, gave me hope for the future, but it did.
Brains are weird, and mine is a bit more atypical than the average, but for now, I'll take the victories, and the serotonin hits, where I can get them.