For the curious, my reasons for letting go of this lifelong dream of a project are many. I'll list a few here, just in case anyone is curious. I will start by saying this has been an incredible journey, and I have met some amazing people and had some great experiences due to this car.
1. Heartbreak. I have been silent on all of this during the past few years, but the punchline is I have been ripped off six ways till sunday by a handfull of people to the tune of ten thousand bucks and a couple years of hand wringing. People can be terrible, and money makes terrible people even worse. I have been lied to, betrayed by people I thought were friends, and backstabbed by vendors I had engaged in good faith to help with this project. Its hard for me to look at the car without having all of those feelings surface, my blood boil, and my barely suppressed anger come racing to the surface. It's just tough.
2. I think I have also come to the realization that this project is simply outside of the scope of my skills. Which is a bummer, and a really tough thing to admit. I originally thought I could simply learn any skills I needed to learn in order to bring his project home, as that has traditionally been my M.O. which has served me well for decades. Don't know how to do something?? learn!! However building a car from essentially the ground up is a whole different beast. The fact that my personal safety is interwoven with the project makes it an order of magnitude more difficult. I've also realized, perhaps as a result of item number one above, that I just don't have the perseverance to see it through. I find myself wanting to work on other projects more, smaller ones that provide quicker wins. It's weird.
3. My health. For those of you who are IRL or facebook friends with me, you know that I have had a number of non-trivial run-ins with skin cancer over the past few years, with no signs of them stopping. I just had another face surgery a couple of weeks ago, and recently started on a chemotherapy treatment which has revealed numerous other cancerous growths on my nose. I guess stuff like that just gives me perspective. I'm about to get a much needed corrective surgery done on my foot which will put me out of commission for about three or four months. I guess my point is that health problems seem to put things in perspective. Life is short, and I think my time is better spent on things that I really LOVE doing, not things that I am doing simply out of stubbornness.
I still love the 89 car and it will forever remain to me the coolest batmobile ever built. And maybe over time things will change and I will revisit the project. but for now, I think it's just time to take a step back and re-assess.
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I'm going to write up a "lessons learned" post too. I'm sure it's been done before, and was promptly ignored by everyone, but I swear if just ONE person can avoid some of the mistakes I made during this build, I guess it will be worth it.