Over the years I've learned to trust my instincts. That gut feeling you get that nags at you to maybe do or don't do something. Sometimes they are good feelings, sometimes bad.
I've been planning a trip to Rochester NY for the last week. There was a place I wanted to check out for sourcing stuff for my resell business and there was also a spooky location to blog about for Halloween. The trip isn't completely canceled yet, so hopefully that will be a post for another day, so no spoilers... You'll have to wait.
Regardless, I just had a weird feeling about this trip from the start. It started a few days ago. I didn't know what it was, but something was nagging at me. It just didn't feel right. Later that day, I was offroad riding roughing up my new tires, when I noticed my throttle assembly was a little loose. I had fiddled with it a couple weeks back while working on the carburetor.
I got it home, tightened it back up. I was a little relieved thinking maybe that was the issue that caused my feeling of dread or mistrust. It was a feeling of something not being quite right with this trip.
The feeling did subside, then last night, as I researched my routes looking for the most scenic way, the feeling returned. Something didn't feel right.
OK, I haven't taken any trips this season. I spent the entire summer focusing on my reselling business. I'm not canceling this trip because I'm getting some weird vibes. On top of that, I need some content for my Youtube channel. I did two posts at the beginning of the season, then nothing. I needed a vid.
Last night I pulled out the cameras, and now the Ghost Drift XL wont charge. I just remembered I broke my selfie stick doing a repair video and forget to order another one. I can't find my charging cables for the Akaso camera. Things are not goig smoothly.
Call me old fashioned, but when things don't go smoothly I always think its the universe telling me to rethink my plans. Its just the Pagan in me, but when things are meant to be, they tend to go smoothly. The universe clears all obstacles and it's full steam ahead. When they go the other way, I question my actions.
Now I had this weird dread feeling, and things ARE NOT GOING SMOOTHLY! I'm really contemplating canceling the trip to Rochester.
I wake up late today, still feel uncertain but decide to carry on. I set up the cameras, pack a backpack, have a cup of coffee and head out the door. For the first time ever, the bike gives me a bit of an issue starting. It started kind of hard. I shrug it off as first cold start, we got close to freezing last night.
Still with the bad vibes, I head out on the road. The bike is running good, but still I have this nagging feeling. I'm not a paranoid person, when I feel like this there's a reason.
Sure enough, I get about halfway to Rochester and the bike starts spitting and sputtering then stalls out at a red light. THIS NEVER HAPPENS. I push it to the side of the road and discover the air fuel mixture screw has fallen out of the carburetor.
It fell between the starter and engine block and I was able to fish it out and get it back in on the side of the road. However, now I have "mixture screw paranoia". I got lucky once, if it falls out again, I may not be so lucky and actually lose the screw this time.
I carry forth against my better judgement, and after about another 20 minutes and reflecting on all the issues that lead up to this, I decided to turn back around and call it a day! I actually feel good about that decision because the "dread feels" have passed.
I don't know what it is, but there is something to intuition. I believe we instinctively know when something is off in our life. From subtle signs from the universe, to feelings of paranoia and dread, we get these feels for a reason.
Over the years I've learned to trust these instincts. Whenever I ignore them, I almost always regret it later. My ex-wife used to think I was nuts when we first started dating. After ten years of marriage, she realized that more times than not, when I got a weird feeling, ignoring it would be disastrous. The last time we avoided a major accident while traveling through a snowstorm on a mountain in New Mexico. We pulled off and spent the night in a roach motel. The next morning we turned on the news to discover close to 50 people had died on the other side of the mountain, sliding into each other on the ice. It was all over the morning news. My wife just looked at me as she sipped her coffee and said, "I will never doubt your intuition again."
It was literally over the next hill. Had we not stopped at the motel we have probably been involved in the accidents. It was funny too, (not that there was anything funny about highway accidents) because I almost started panicking telling her we needed to get off the road immediately. She thought I was nuts.
But that's the type of feeling I'm talking about. You don't know what it is, but you just know something is not right. And the more wrong it gets, the stronger the vibe.
So that was my misadventure for the day. Do you trust your instincts and intuition? Have you had any similar experiences where you ignore your gut and something terrible happens?
On a positive note, I once had a dream I won a dogecoin jackpot, then played dogecoin slots all morning and actually hit the jackpot. 1,000,0000 doge. At the time doge was only a fraction of a cent, but still, it was a nice score.
Have you ever followed good hunches with success. I'm telling you there's more to this stuff than we understand.
Well, I'd love to read your insights. Feel free to share some stories about your intuition, good or bad. Thanks for reading and I hope your day is going a little better than mine. Cheers.