It's weird, how, whenever I'm down at my worst, this car, and people's reactions to it, always has an odd way to light a little warmth back in my heart. And that's something you can't buy. That's not something you can name drop your way into. I've made this analogy many a times, but the FD RX-7 is my automotive wife, heh. Kinda like how there may be prettier, more capable women out there than your wife, you love your wife for who she is because she makes you feel special, y'know? There's an intangible connection you can't put into words, yet one special and profound enough that you would not exchange that for anything else in the world.
The RX-7, especially the FD generation, is one of the most divisive, if not the single most divisive car I think I've ever seen. It's a car that, if you get it, you love it, but for those who don't, they'll see this as a disgusting, unreliable, uncomfortable, uneconomical piece of shit. You could literally hear the disgust in this guy's voice when he says "a 1994 Mazda", which ironically makes the FD stand out all the more, simply because it was quite unfathomable that a small, independent carmaker in Hiroshima could produce something that could challenge the world back in the day, and even to now they still haven't quite recaptured that magic.
But what really puts a smile on my face is when someone who isn't a racing car driver or a sports driving enthusiast getting into the car, and being immediately bewitched by its unique, lightweight balance, and smooth vocals and power, even on the streets. This is the kind of car that make people LOVE cars to begin with. Being one of the cars with the most pure design both aesthetically and performance wise, it's almost as though this car embodied the souls of Mazda engineers back in the 90s. Cars nowadays simply do not have this much character engineered into a them nowadays, what with safety standards stating that we ought to protect those who don't look left right left before crossing, and how people buy cars based on badges and spec sheets instead of how it makes you feel, or manufacturers simply sticking with cookie cutter, established trends to ensure sales. Once you've experienced the bug bite of a pure, simple, focused performance car like the FD, there simply is no forgetting it, and there simply is no way of getting over it, no getting enough of it and no way of duplicating that intoxicating mix.
I suppose it's rather inevitable that cars sort of have to drive themselves for the driver nowadays, with so much power on tap, even professional racing drivers would have their hands full managing all that power. I just feel that it's such a damn shame we can't have more of the 90s Japanese Economy Bubble sports cars anymore, right at that sweet spot in history where cars could only produce manageable power, and when regulations and trends didn't have such a strong chokehold on the industry, yet advanced and safe enough in sensible hands. But I digress.
It's people and videos like these that make me really feel that a next generation Mazda Rotary Sports Car would be warmly welcomed, if only by that select few people that it can "speak" to. And, god, what will it take for me to be able to put smiles on the faces of people who drive a car I created ten, twenty, fifty years down the road?
I've said this ever since I took up a Mechanical Engineering course in tertiary education, but I want to build, design, or just in whatever small way I can be part of the development of the next gen Rotary Sports Car. Hell, I'll even take being a coffee boy or a toilet cleaner, if it means I get to wear a Mazda shirt and help the people responsible to come up with something that can rival the FD in terms of significance and purity of self expression.
This is going to sound weird coming from me, but I think my love for the RX-7, and Mazda Rotary Sports Cars in general, is pretty undeniable. But, with only a sixth of 2017 left, battling depression and anxiety throughout, bouncing from job to job, receiving both helpful advice and scornful dismissals from friends and family... a lot of the negativity is getting to me.
Honestly, if you want to dig deep enough, you might even claim that my love for the FD is the main, if not sole cause for all my misery. Because I love cars so much and did so much research on them and always wanted better, always wanted more, I despised my outdated and backwards polytechnic education, where I looked down on our education system and lecturers, and even my classmates, who happily spent their days playing games with each other and graduating with the same diploma as I did, but with better grades. Because I felt like I was in a rush to make the most of my youth and get some industry experience I loathed slavery even moreso than your average joe, sometimes with the angst building to a dangerous fever pitch that could have easily landed me in severe trouble. I openly defied orders in the faces of those giving them and even at one point attempted to punch a spec in the face. And now, being a grown ass adult free of the shackles of "education" and slavery, I find myself impossible to please because I can't find a way to make enough money and get enough relevant industry experience to buy my own FD in this fucked up country, let alone modify and fine tune it to tackle the most daunting and challenging of roads. I suppose that's where my hateful perfectionism comes from, too. After all, in car tuning, even a tenth of a degree in wheel alignment can make a world's difference, and we're dealing with hugely expensive chunks of metal capable of mass murder. Where a second's difference in lap times is an eternity? And so it's just a mentality I grew up with, and it's that mentality that makes me disagree with so much of society as I see it. How could anyone sleep at night doing a slipshod job deemed as "good enough"? How could I have ever fathomed that laziness could take such a strong hold in the culture of a workplace, and that lying on a report just to get it over and done with was the right thing to do? What if a racing driver took a car I tuned, expecting it to corner, but the car fails him at a hundred kilometres per hour? What if someone depended on a report I was told by my superior to lie in? How could anyone do their jobs just to earn a paycheck to continue their existence without being personally invested into a job?
I don't get any of it, and I'm so scared because that seems to be the mentality of the vast majority of people in working society. After all, who's going to be super passionate about flipping burgers, or sweeping the streets? We can't all be special. We can't all be that lucky to find a job that aligns with our personal goals and needs, yet society still needs to function and we need to be paid. I don't know how to fit in with a society like that... and it's causing me a great deal of anguish and panic.
At this point, I'm very surprised that none of my close friends and family have hated that "devil's car", for making me like this. If I hadn't loved cars, if I hadn't loved the FD as much as I did maybe, just maybe, I could have a stable 9-5 office job and be content with "just being alive" and just "getting a monthly paycheck".
While they haven't expressly hated the car itself, almost all of them have at some point, with some variation, told me to give up on my unrealistic dream. And that's just something I have never been able to even go close to understanding. I don't understand how telling someone to give up on their dream is supposed to make them happier, and I don't understand how one is supposed to just give up the one and only thing they crave, yearn, and live their whole life for. Like, what the hell else am I gonna be if I'm not going to be a technician/ engineer/ tuner/ racing car driver? What the hell else would I be good for? What the hell else would I be interested in? Would there be any meaning in a life without my own FD? No. I would be so fucking lost and empty if I could not have that in some way, shape or form. You can liken it to a drug addiction if it helps you understand it any better, but I would literally choose to die if I can't get that same high again. Living with the pain would drive me insane. Every moment without it is withdrawal and it's fucking miserable.
The world is cruel enough as it is. Just... let me have this, please...
What the hell does it mean exactly to be happy? How does one go about achieving happiness as a state of mind instead of just a supply? I'm pretty sure there would be people that have wound up happier by giving up on an impossible dream, or an impossible love, such as that of widows. Yet on the other hand, success stories are aplomb of famous entrepreneurs, inventors, trailblazers, whatever else term there is, and the main ingredient in their success stories has always been that they never gave up in the face of adversity, in spite of nobody sharing their vision, and have the love of their trade carry them to a breakthrough.
So what the hell is better for me. Am I better just letting this go, pretending I was never touched by that magic, that I never found my calling in life, living a whole life of denial and end up a salty, grudge ridden old man full of regrets? Or do I continue losing my goddamned mind, blotting out large chunks of my life with drugs and alcohol to hopefully survive long enough like this hoping some miracle one day gives me a break into the industry, into the company?
If there's no fixed answer as to what ought to make us all happy because we're all so different, then perhaps life is about finding our own brand of happiness. And, yeah, it's unrealistic. Hell, at this point I don't even know how I'm supposed to make enough money to feed my car, have a job I enjoy, while providing for my family and even a wife. And it drives me into depressive states and panic attacks when that topic is brought up either by friends or just me wondering to myself in my head. But... I actually don't know any other way to live or exist. I don't know how to give up. I don't know how to let go of a love and passion. I don't know if I'll truly be happier even if I did give it up.
I'd beg for help right about now, but I honestly don't know who I want to help me or how, or, if they're going to tell me to give up anyway, if I even want their help to begin with.
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