I Thought I Broke Up With the Car World… Then It Invited Me Back as a Guest Judge

Recently, I was booked as a guest judge at a car show during the Wharf Rat Rally. My first thought probably should have been excitement. Instead, it was: Why me? I am not a car builder. There were going to be plenty of people at that show who knew more than I did about engines, welding and everything happening underneath the hood. Why book me instead of one of them? But beneath that question was another one I had been quietly asking myself for months: Do I even want to remain part of the car world? After spending my last essay defending what I contributed to that world, which felt gross, by the way, I started questioning my place in it. It didn't feel gross because I regretted anything I said. I know the work I did, and there comes a point when staying silent starts to feel like giving somebody else permission to write your story. But I didn't enjoy being pulled back into a chapter I was trying to leave. I didn't enjoy feeling as though readers had to choose a side before they could decide whether my work had value. I don't want to build an opposing team. I want to build a life. But if remaining in the automotive world meant continuing to defend my place in it, revisiting the same arguments and staying permanently attached to a former version of my life, I wasn't sure I wanted it anymore. Maybe the cleanest way forward was to leave the entire car world behind. The problem is that I can't change the fact that I was on a car show on Discovery. I can't edit it out of my story. Nor do I want to. For nearly a decade, my life revolved around cars. After television ended, I created a digital-media version of the show. The cars were the subject, but the process became the product. And I was completely obsessed with capturing that process. I loved documenting the decisions, mistakes, setbacks and small victories between the first idea and the finished car. I loved the hunt for the next project. The search for the impossible-to-find part. The road trips that began with, 'apparently there's a 1934 Ford in a basement…' And I genuinely loved meeting people who had 13,000 stories about one vehicle. Car people never simply own a car. They know who bought it first, where it spent the winter of 1987, which cousin dented the quarter-panel and why they will absolutely never sell it… unless, of course, you make them an offer. There is a camaraderie in that world that I enjoyed. Want my next essay delivered to your inbox? 📥 The cars may bring people together, but the stories keep them standing in the parking lot for another hour. So maybe my relationship with cars had never been about knowing the most about what was underneath the hood. Maybe it was about everything that happened around them. The process. The transformation. The people. The stories. And the way a car can become an extension of someone's personal style. I have always believed your car says something about your taste before you ever step out of it. Some people want something loud, aggressive and impossible to ignore. Others want restraint. Beautiful proportions. A colour you have to look at twice. I know what I like. When I arrived at the Wharf Rat Rally, however, appreciating the cars required surviving the weather first. It was rainy and cold. I had prepared for this by wearing a winter jacket and flip-flops, a combination that suggested I had checked several different forecasts and committed to none of them. Thankfully, I remembered that I had a pair of cozy slippers in the car. So, naturally, I judged a car show in slippers. This next chapter is already very glamorous. Dale fromBackroad Truckerswas there too, which gave the day the energy of a very damp Canadian television crossover. Once I began walking through the rows of cars, I stopped thinking about public narratives, former roles or whether I was supposed to remain in this world. I was simply looking at cars. And I enjoyed it. No identity debate required. Out of everything there, I kept returning to an off-white 1966 Barracuda. I wasn't searching for the car that would be the most technically impressive to someone else. I chose the one I would want to be seen in. There is something special about cars from the 1960s. They still carry a little of the concept car in them, as though the designers were allowed to have ideas before every decision had to survive a focus group. The Barracuda I chose is a perfect example. Its fastback roofline sweeps into an enormous curved rear window, 14 square feet of tinted glass wrapping around the back of the car. It is unusual, dramatic and unmistakable. In off-white, it was even better. The colour was quiet enough to let the shape do all the talking. It was the car I could picture myself driving. So that was the one I chose. The gentleman who owned it turned out to be a longtime viewer. He spoke to me with genuine kindness and respect. That meant more to me than he probably realized. He didn't ask me to defend myself. He didn't turn the interaction into a referendum on two people he had watched together. He simply treated me as though my presence and perspective belonged there. The experience reminded me that an entire community cannot be reduced to its loudest comments. There are people who watched for years and understood that two people could contribute different things. There are people capable of respecting me without feeling that doing so requires them to disrespect somebody else. And there are people far more interested in talking about how a 1966 Barracuda went across the block on Barrett Jackson than revisiting the details of my former relationship. Thank God. Moving forward does not require me to pretend the last decade never happened. I don't need to abandon everything I genuinely enjoyed simply because some of it now carries complicated memories. I can appreciate cars without making them my entire identity. I can enter familiar spaces without returning to the role I once occupied inside them. I can keep what I loved and leave behind what it cost me. No matter what has happened, I am still a car girl. Not because I can build one. Because I appreciate the design, the process, the hunt and the stories people attach to them. Because out of an entire field of cars, I still know exactly which one I would want to be seen in. Being invited to judge that show didn't answer every question I have about where I'm going next. But it answered one… the car world can belong in my next chapter if I want it to. It just doesn't have to be the whole story. As for who else I am? That part is considerably less clear. I'm 37 years old and somewhere in the middle of an identity crisis. I'll dive more into that next week. Until next time, JOLENE Someone in the subscriber chat asked me why I chose Substack. I chose it because I wanted a quieter place to go a little deeper. Facebook is very good at starting conversations and considerably less reliable at letting anyone finish a thought without it becoming a polarizing debate. Then tell me in the comments: Have you ever walked away from one chapter only to realize there were parts of it you still wanted to keep? …ps podcast coming soon :) (click here to subscribe)