grats fam!

I do still think it's mildly terrifying that I'm now legally allowed to drive without supervision

t hopefully I will get over it

there's a slight 'call of the void' feeling that iirc is normal, just awareness that it is a thing to be responsible about

I assume it's a general 'it is absolutely bullshit I'm legally an adult and technically can't be stopped from doing certain things, this is entirely too much power, let's just not deal with that and put it back in the box' type thing

yeah

though right now just saying, if anything I type in the tags does some truly aggressive not making sense, I'm sorry and just give me a heads up so I can fix it when I'm sober

keep a dildo in the trunk so you drive safer knowing you don't want that of all things to be discovered /...

I assume most of my trips would involve shipping them out so it's be more a question of when I'd be driving without an unreasonably large animal dong in the car

illicit dong delivery

(I fully admit I'm not sure how concerned I am about police of paramedics seeing a couple of dongs now that my parents grandparents and one of my cousins have seen my work)

"i swear it had nothing to do with why you're here"

NICE congrats what kind

it's a little suzuki alto

cute, i hear they handle great

my first car felt like tupperware on wheels haha

my primary goal was getting something tiny because all my lessons were done in small cars and I didn't want to start figuring out something bigger by myself

same feel friend

the fact this one managed to be in a price range where I didn't need to take out a loan and was decently under the limit of savings I'm allowed to accumulate while on disability made it absolutely perfect

if it's affordable look into balance/rotation/alignment packages at your local repair shops--if you're planning on keeping it a while that kind of preventative maintenance might spare you a lot of money and grief down the road

this is also normal

"You were conscious, paying attention, making decisions/corrections, your brain just didn’t think it was worth hitting “record”

i remember reading or watching something somewhere that when you zone out like that you statistically drive better/more within the lines, etc

achieved baby's first entirely solo drive by driving to the shops after driving mum to work, now home safely and absolutely delighted that my choice in car shape means I need no special manoeuvring to get up the driveway

unlike my dad's manual car which is longer bodied and thus needs him to snake up the driveway so nothing scrapes on the road

I can just go nyooom straight up the unreasonably step driveway with no problem

*steep

heck yeah

follow up drive I fucked up hardcore by bumping the front bumper on the road getting off the driveway and running a red light like an absolute dumbass

uh oh

so now I'm back to peak anxiety after being chilled out for a bit

because I'm good at turning all tiny set backs into the end of the fucking world

absolutely no damage came to anyone or anything other than my anxiety disorder

same hat fam. it's not much to say that but i also have the condition and i get that it's like, COOL I LOVE THIS FEELING

to be fair, anxiety disorder is a shit bag which has problems with things on the level of putting bread in a toaster, so it can't be a good judge of things

er to type that than to feel that

*but it's easier to type that

it was more aggressively bad because I was looking directly at the light and continued because the green light for pedestrians lit up the light for the carsin a way that made it look like the light was still green

I am however starting to conclude the particular area is mildly cursed because it seems to be an area I'm consistently having problems with, both in lessons and real driving, with healthy mix of me fucking up and other drivers fucking up

(other issues have been me hitting the wrong indicator, and a guy straight up cutting across a shit load of lanes right in front of me)

merging is spooky bullshit because it involves trusting other drivers not to be dicks

(also a guy cut off a bus by gunning it through a give way sign at a t-intersection)

that shit was outright terrifying

like, nothing collided, but, that was straight up a 'SOMEONE DEFINITELY WOULD HAVE DIED AND IT WASN'T GOING TO BE THE BUS DRIVER'

I've been giving myself a full half hour, so currently all my fuck ups are just I'm painfully new to it and not used to passengers who talk to me instead of telling me what to do

still only way I'm going to learn, it's why I had to buy a car in the first place

the biggest potential bonus: job opportunities and not having to learn a new and shittier bus schedule every six monthsbus

the minor bonus is the ability to start attending things that force me out of the house more so I can hopefully cut down on my social anxiety situation too

though honestly the first step on the whole outline of sorting my shit out was just the getting the license in the first place so I succeeded in the first and second steps there

yeah super normal to suffer through a lot of high anxiety micro incidents/scares while learning. a lot of it is other people being morons. just getting behind the wheel is a huge step though like you said. it'll be worth it

psychologist was definitely onto something suggesting moving to an automatic over continuing to trying an mash my face against the wall of manual car driving, because god, imagine all this shit while trying to remember how the hell gears work

whoa uh YEAH learning on a manual is hella intimidating haha

when I went for my motocycle licence I would say 100% having the "rules of the road" already established in my mind made the process of learning how to operate a manual motorcycle (which I would say is less complicated than a car) much easier

my baby brother wanted to start on a manual motorcycle for the purposes of going straight onto the road with no lessons

(spoilers: the motorcycle he bought crapped out within a day of buying it)

so he now just backseat brags about how easy driving manual cars is

(I am jealous as shit of his confidence and lack of mental illnesses while fully acknowledging the boy is a bit of a shit bag)

man with motorcycles it's just shifting up and down on the left foot...
cruiser, sport bike, adventure bike, dirt bike; all the same. 1st, neutral, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.

cars it's like up left right, ok you're in park, down right now in first, etc etc AND THAT CHANGES BETWEEN CARS

don't get me wrong I'd love to learn how to drive a manual car but I have no one to learn me so I'm actually quite envious of you haha. it's very intimidating without a teacher.

I have two!

The only thing I 100% got down in the manual was hill starts, to the point I instantly forget all attempts to learn hill starts in an automatic because aparently my brains like 'nah we already have the info, no need to get the new stuff down

hill starts aaaaa

they're becoming understandably obsolete but man if i don't have a secret heart throb for old spot car designs...

give me a 1970s camero or charger with all modern amenities and i'll be set

my dad owns a manual which was why I started trying to learn one, but the entirety of my license getting ended up being done by paying for lessons out of pocket so the whole part about what car dad had and was willing to teach me ended up being entirely irrelevant