Today, an excavator and water truck occupied half of the road, the other half brush – so I drove through the brush. I’ve been knocking down brush with the pickup for days – the flimsy plastic flares that Ford insulted it with have complaints scraped into their paint.

I stop next to them to chat, and one of them says, “You’ll scratch your paint.”
I return, “The paint will get scratched.”
“But your paint!”
“This is what this pickup does. It doesn’t sit in a driveway and look pretty. It doesn’t go to car shows. It’s here to do a job. Like that excavator.”

And so it is. Commitment. Sure, I thought about the paint. Sure, I thought about it – but it was that moment where you either dive in or wade in. I dove in. The pickup will get scratched. I didn’t buy it to be pristine. I bought it to be a little beast, taking me to places where others only go with heavier equipment. I ask it less than I ask of me – where I was committed to objectives, where I went on despite injury.

The pickup can get scrapes. It will wear them as I wear my scars: proudly. And I will keep it when it’s work is done and drive it til it dies, because that’s loyalty.

And I am loyal to those who help me on the way.

People will invariably tell me that I should buy something else, and in time I may. But this pickup is becoming a part of the greater machine, the greater commitment.